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

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

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

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

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.

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