When The Sixth Sense was the No. 1 movie in America, I had a Canadian boyfriend whose only assets at the time were a guitar and a van. I don't know what I was thinking.

I didn't know box office was a thing you could possess but I don't have it. I go up for lovely roles and people with this nebulous thing called box office get them so there isn't much I can do about that unless you know where I can get some box-office myself!

Carey Mulligan is completely self-possessed. She knows what she's doing, and again, quite like the big-hitters I was talking about, my job was just to feel and reflect back the amazing performance coming my way. If anything, I was slightly pathetically flying in her tailwind. She's an extraordinary actress.

I really needed to have something in my life, because I realized there were other things more important than my career. So I love having my children and my family.

I don't tend to spend the whole day in the personality of the person I'm playing.

It's funny, when people want things to be very truthful and you're dealing with an inexperienced actor. I'm of the school that believes things like that have to be very carefully choreographed. You need people there to say, "It's going to happen like this."

I'm on record as having said "I've done this amazing movie - The Sixth Sense - that no one is going to see." And then it stayed in the top 10 American films for about six months. So don't ask me. I'm the most disastrous PR and marketing predictor.