Female ambition is such a complicated thing to play because it is an aggressive quality, and people respond very badly to women exhibiting any kind of aggression.

I've worked with actors who tell everyone what to do in the scene - that makes me go pretty atomic.

I really like films and plays that cross over different genres. So I'd like to do something that you think is a drama and then you think is a supernatural thing and then becomes a drama again. That's very vague.

As a kid, I really loved 'Jane Eyre,' I used to fantasise that the past was so much better and my lifetime was crap.

I would love to live free of the fear and sadness and real desperation that I think the effect of childbirth has on women, especially because we are expected to be so concerned by recovery from childbirth.

I think I was quite lucky in that I went to an all-girls school. I was never put in an environment where I had to be the other - the woman as opposed to the man - all the way through my education. I was never made to feel that way at home.

The advent of digitally enhancing images - and the fact that actresses weren't protesting against that - created an environment where big corporations felt like they had total ownership over the bodies of actresses.