Since I had children I have taken huge amounts of time off. In a way it's a really good thing, in this show business especially, to have lots of private time, having lots of time to be in the world to observe people and read and take care of my kids helps me to come back into work with a thrill.

Directors are our teachers, and I'm always craving to work with a great director. They're pretty much the first thing that interests me about a project. Let's put it this way: It'll take me a lot longer to read a script if there's no director attached.

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.

There's a lot of skeletons in my closet, but I know what they're wearing. I'm not gonna act all ashamed of it.

I love the energy and the knowledge. I barely know how to use this thing [mobile phone]. I get by.

Oh, I'm definitely a wild child.

I was going on years and years of auditions and being told I was too this, too that, not enough of this, not enough of that, to the point where I was so afraid and diluting myself into absolutely nothing...