I need to be frightened of things. I hate it, but I must need it, because it's what I do.

Also, in a funny way, if you have been happily married there are no unresolved areas, nothing to prove to yourself after the other dies.

I took a fortnight off. But I'm not a great believer in breaks. I don't want to be rattling around inside my own head. I did feel I was spiralling into a Kathy Burke character and tried going out, but I prefer it here. Filming keeps me busy. It absorbs me.

I wasn't good with authority, went to lots of schools, didn't like the fact that there was no autonomy.

In fact I am quite snappy and irritable, and I don't know if I'd like to make myself worse in that respect.

I think maybe when you live with someone who is really very ill for a long time, it somehow gives you more of a greedy appetite for life and maybe, yes, you are less measured in your behaviour than you would otherwise be.

I was a quiet teenager, introverted, full of angst.