My career is chequered. Then I think I got pigeon-holed in humour; Shakespeare is not my thing.

There were male colleges, and there were very few female colleges.

I just did adore Daniel - Daniel Radcliffe, who I had worked with before "Harry Potter" and spent a long time telling all the producers they had to see him because I thought he was so terrific. And it's been sad thinking about it because of Alan Rickman.

It seems to me there is a change in what audiences want to see…I can only hope that’s correct, because there’s an awful lot of people of my age around now and we outnumber the others.

There is a kind of invisible thread between the actor and the audience, and when it's there it's stunning, and there is nothing to match that.

I had a very good English teacher who said to me that she thought I ought to do it. She - I don't know, she saw something thank goodness because I think if it hadn't been encouraged by somebody that serious, I'm not sure what would've happened to me.

Alan Rickman was such a terrific actor, and that was such a terrific character that he played. And it was a joy to be with him. We used to laugh together because we ran out of reaction shots. They were always - when everything had been done and the children were finished, they would turn the camera around and we'd have to do various reaction shots of amazement or sadness and things. We used to say we'd got to about number 200-and-something and we'd run out of knowing what to do when the camera came around on us. But he was a joy.