If a script is good, you are 10 steps into the part just reading it. But my choices are not all down to my taste. It is about people you have worked with before.

If the script's good, everything you need is in there. I just try and feel it, and do it honestly.

If a script is good, you are 10 steps into the part just reading it. But my choices are not all down to my taste. It is about people you have worked with before.

In fact I was slightly badly behaved at school and got in trouble. I would get a bee in my bonnet about something I thought wasn't right, and I would ape about too, to make everybody laugh. That was my way through my girls' school, because I wasn't very academic.

This may sound mad, but you sort of assume that no one's going to watch what you do. You go on set, have a lovely time, and then you forget anyone's going to see it. So it's always a bit of a shock to be recognized. I get terribly embarrassed.

I had a lovely, feral, free childhood - out and then come back when you're hungry or it gets too dark. I feel slightly cruel that I'm not offering my children the same.

I don't like the bullying, do-one-over style of comedy. It's so cheap.