Sometimes you can incubate a character and that can take me a month just sitting on it imagining it, doing everything from sketching it to taking long walks, but sometimes you can see the character immediately. A lot of it is instinctive.

I was the kid that grew up watching Bette Davis films.

I've played an awful lot of repressed people.

I read everything. I've always got a book on the go and I'm really nerdy about it, I get through books and don't remember anything about them afterwards. But I read all sorts, from classic to contemporary.

I think for a long time it seemed like working in an art form and being a feminist meant portraying women in a perfect, angelic light. And there's nothing feminist about that.

I'm not consciously avoiding doing a lot of period drama, but I don't really seek it out either.

There are a lot of movies about misfits that are quite cool, that kind of glamorize it on some level. I think there are fewer films, certainly with a lady at the center, about the agony of what it's like to feel like you're not accepted, and you're different, and somehow you're weird.