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.

I think with the best actors, emotion is something that has no kind of check in them.

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.

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.

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.

I want people to think I'm sexy, but to know also that I've got an ordinary body and not feel intimidated.