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

I'm a quasi-only child. With my brother and sister, I've more of a tendency to be semi-maternal. So, yes, I spent a lot of time talking to myself - I had this big dressing-up box and would just dress up as lots of characters and talk back to myself... Verging on schizophrenia, I suppose, if you analyse it carefully.

I just want to play real human beings. You know, I don't care if they're male or female.

The Tudors”) “I walked away thinking, well, if I don't get the job, it doesn't matter - I've kissed Jonathan Rhys Meyers!

When a show communicates on such a vast level internationally, you know, and philosophizes about power, gender politics, and crimes against humanity, which Game of Thrones deals with all those things, then I'm just grateful that it reinstates my faith that art can be life applicable.

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?

I don't believe in nudity for nudity's sake, nothing gratuitous.