The light and the dark are the same. They share. They really do rub up against each other, and they are extraordinarily familiar with each other. They are actually friends.

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

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.

I've sort of prided myself on playing characters with conscience. The first way I go about creating a character is looking at that area of conscience. What have they done, and what has it cost.

It is the ordinariness of us that is the same in all of us.

As an actor, I usually have to find something to love about my character in order to play her.

I am so proud of Amelia Boynton. I can burst with pride.