Sometimes they come to you and it's a small role, so it's about the experience and the journey and mixing with people you know you will learn from. Or sometimes it's a scene in a movie that you think, 'I just have to play this person.'

There's a set of rules out there somewhere that says it all ends by 40. I hope to be able to defy that because I truly love my work.

I consider myself British and have very happy memories of the UK. I spent the first 14 years of my life in England and never wanted to leave. When I was in Australia I went back to England a lot.

Some movies are the kind you take home with you at the end of the day, and some, you can let go.

On set is where I feel comfortable. The red carpet stuff, talking about the film, explaining your own life, it doesn't come naturally. It's all necessary stuff I suppose but it's not my strength.

I had gotten to a place where I truly believed everything I was called: 'not sexy,' 'not funny,' 'too intense,' desperate.' All those labels they gave me, I took them because there wasn't a trace of my true self left.

It is a huge amount of pressure playing someone like Valerie Plame-Wilson. First of all who she is and what she's done is wildly intimidating and impressive. It is just scary to take on that responsibility, and you want to honor her story, an incredible story that affected us all. She is often doing things that were confusing to me, like her sexual prowess. I think that she is in a lot of pain and she has been really badly wounded along the way. She doesn't hold men in the highest regard... not just men but people.