A passion for any novel, and any character, can crystallise your ideas when you really need to be as open as possible as a performer.

I'm not interested in going to see films that massively overrepresent men over women. It's lik,e how much more have we got to say about this? Like men in war and dealing with their masculinity in conflict. I just think we've exhausted the landscape.

When you talk to women who were working as print journalists or in broadcasting in the '50s, and then you talk to women who were working in the late '60s, there's an enormous difference. There had already been a huge transition. Then, of course, you get well into the '70s and there were women with children working.

Women don't question themselves when they enter into a story that has male characters, but men do question the validity of a female narrative.

Normally, when youre working on something, there are other characters that you have alliances with, and you have unified goals with some characters.

I have always been interested in gender politics, so I'm not that keen on doing things that don't represent a truth about women.

Motherhood so often comes in conflict with women's capacity to express and live their own lives.