Actors have this amazing skill - we bond quite quickly but equally we move on quite quickly. There's nothing particularly cold or capricious about it - we're troubadours and lead a troubadour's lifestyle.

I do as much research as is physically possible when I'm playing a real person, be they alive or dead.

I think classes can be the most fun. And if you want to make it a social thing and you want to go with friends, then that's the way to do it.

I say I’m an atheist but I wouldn’t mind being visited by a ghost.

It's wrong - everyone's concentrating on the wrong thing. There's 130 million people in crisis in this world at the moment, in humanitarian crisis, and most of them are women, more than half of them are women. So can we all stop slinging mud at each other about definition?

Some of the most successful, talented actresses of our generation, be it Julianne Moore, or Charlize Theron, or Charlotte Gainsbourg, or Isabella Rossellini, if you know your cinema history, have taken their clothes off. There's nothing wrong with nudity, per se, if it's part of the storytelling and it's eloquent and it says something about the raw humanity of the story.

Ive got a soft spot for really cheesy 1980s ballads by Pat Benatar and Foreigner. When I'm having my make-up put on at 6am and I need to be warmed up gently, it's always Ella Fitzgerald or Nina Simone.