A character on a page has to feel real, and for me the greatest fun is if you could gender-swap the role.

I know I'm not a conventional beauty. You can read a lot of painful things on the Internet, which criticise you aesthetically - but as far as I'm concerned, that's not what an actress is.

It's fascinating how much of our sense of attractiveness and feminine identity is bound up in our hair.

There are a lot of parallels between the historical Henry VIII and Jonathan Rhys Meyers. There's an oscillation and extremity of emotion throughout his repertoire that lends itself beautifully to the nature of Henry VIII, definitely. He will push things to the limit, and yet remain in emotional control.

We don't have enough young, female antiheroes. We don't accept women as antiheroes the way we do the men.

We're getting caught up with labels: "Nudity: bad." It's not about "nudity: bad." It's about gratuitous oversexualization of children; it's complicated.

I'm not clever enough to be in machinations and real politics.