I am amazed about how everyone wants to know about my love life. They whisper to me, 'Tell me the truth? Is it true?' Who cares? Because we have this job, we are to say to everybody what we do, or with whom we sleep? It's a bit absurd, but that's why everybody lies so much.

Sometimes you will do a close-up for a scene in the morning where you are totally distraught, then shoot the rest of that scene seven hours later. How do you hang on to that feeling all day without burning up, without going so far that you have nothing left to give when the cameras roll again?

I really think insecurity is something that comes with being an actor - I don't know actors who aren't insecure. I do think I kind of lie to myself - there is a percentage of ego involved. And I don't say that's a bad thing - it's good to know that it's there whether we like it or not. But ego is like a lion that we have to keep under control.

Pedro Almodóvar asked me to watch italian films again as homework to look at the energy of all those women from the Italian neo-realist films. A lot of them had those characters that represented motherhood. For some reason, in the '50s in Italy, the mother figure was very important - and my character needed to have that energy.

My ambition is to be happy.

I never want to lie about my age. If I look around at the actresses I admire, they are all women who have not fought growing older, but embraced it and been proud of it - women like Sophia Loren or Audrey Hepburn.

All those cliches, those things you hear about having a baby and motherhood - all of them are true. And all of them are the most beautiful things you will ever experience.