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.

I don't really want to play parts that I think are not fully developed or fleshed out, especially with female roles.

Postwar Europe was morally stagnant, and there was a lot of neo-conservatism.

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.

I would argue that something dark is lurking between the sexes, and that it is seeping out into cinema.

When you're on stage, you build strong relationships with the actors, but it's a story you tell with the audience - you have to include them, you have to respond to them, they have to understand the narrative.

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.