I feel awful for women who are trying to raise kids on their own, with zero income and no fathers present - that's single motherhood.

Death is final. No it is not just final, it's worse than that, it's diminishing: the dead continue to decrease, to occupy less space.

Living with very limited expectations is a much more immediate way of living. You really do just make the best of everything you have. I guess kids have that ability; they wait in joyful anticipation of something rather than that sense of entitlement.

I always think I love work, and I knew early on that I wanted to be an actress. Then I meet people who have truly dedicated their lives to acting, and I realise that Im so completely in the back seat.

My grandparents never understood why my mother Noreen chose such exotic names for her children: Damon and me. My granny insisted on calling my brother Dermot - a good Irish name - until she died; I was just known as wee one.

I think it's incumbent on actresses to bring something else to the part which isn't in the script.

I happen to find motherhood a very natural state, but I know a lot of other people don't.