I am the worst judge of how a movie is going to do. I always have great and ambitious hopes, but none of them see the light of day.

I'm not much of a Method actress, so even though my character in The Ghost Writer was quite dark and bad-tempered, I could only do that if I was seeming quite perky.

I hope I never get in the situation where I refuse to audition, because I think people have a right to see you interpreting the character, and if you don't do it the way they want you to, they have a right to say, "No."

My parents taught me everything and set me up for life. I owe to them all the things I'm passionate about: music, art, the people I love, my career and family life, the fact that I have children and the way that I raise them.

My parents have always been cool. They even became surrogates to friends of mine who didn't have such supportive parents.

We had an ancient Russian acting coach at my drama school who said the worst offense you could commit was to let your subtext show. That is the point of acting, is to be saying one thing and not be allowed by society or your predicament to show what you're really feeling. In a way, I think that's why the therapy generation has killed script writing, because all you ever get is people going, "Hi, I'm feeling really angry right now."

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.