Initially I started in theatre as a Shakespearean actress before film and television. I've always been an artistic child growing up and I knew I wanted to act for as long as I can remember.

You can't play history and you can't play historical characters. You just have to reduce it to the ordinary.

So many young people feel powerless. We live in a world where it feels like it's so big and yet so small, and that your contribution really doesn't matter.

A lot of our young people are sleep-walking, dreaming that they're awake, and lots of aspects of society initially go about keeping it so.

We actors are superstitious creatures. We do all the homework and we put all of the components together, but there's always one key aspect that we're not in charge of, really, and that's magic. You are always on the lookout for where and how that magic is going to ignite. When you have worked as much as I have and have sought it out as often as I do, you get very clear that it will come at very, very odd, unexpected moments.

Pretend and real are all real to a psychopath.

I grew up a middle class, colonized child of teachers, and librarians and people, women especially, who treasured education.