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.

Your desire to please... actors are people pleasers and if somebody says your vocal choice in this was ridiculous or whatever you will come back and do it differently. So, to avoid getting into a situation where you're altering your performance way down the line you have to just not do it at all. It's hard and I have done it in the past to disastrous consequences!

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.

Our conception of 1950s underwear is a lovely vintage aesthetic, but actually, wearing stockings with no elastic and a girdle was heavy duty.

I can't spend the rest of my life being pretty in a bonnet.

I would like to know that I was still going to be employed as a woman well into my 60s. In acting terms, a career that spans a lifetime is a very hard thing to achieve, particularly as a woman.

The language of freedom-fighting was so co-opted by the baby boomers in order to express their now-hopelessly compromised ideologies that no other generation could emulate it without a smirk. This has created an apathetic generation in the West, with young people no longer distinguishing between the old order and the new.