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

Family holidays and weekends are really brightly colored memories, full of my mother and father, rather than our nannies and au pairs.

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."

The phrase you usually hear after a cut is "That was great. Perhaps we could have another go. Maybe try it this way." Even that much direction is prefaced with a lot of praise and encouragement. It's quite like how you deal with toddlers: positive reinforcement, and then a little suggestion that you might want to try something different. Roman Polanski will stop the take and shout, "No, no, no!" Which is somewhat alarming the first time it happens.

I wanted to play a TV detective because it's a rite of passage; I wanted to experience every area of acting. I haven't done comedy or as much Shakespeare as I had intended.

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.

If the role is right and it's another situation of having a benevolent genius at the head of it, someone who likes actors, and will protect the actors from the ravages of reality-TV drama. It's a brutal world, and you need to have a strong creative team who can stand up to the network.