I think it took a long time for me to realise that as much as I respect reviews and do engage with reviewers as a viewer of the theatre, television and film it's really unhelpful. Even if people make perceptive and interesting comments about your performance, it is so subjective and you will come in and change what you do, you can't help it.

You don't have to conform to a very specific aesthetic today, whereas 1950s women definitely had to.

I'm fundamentally a busy person; I spend my time doing useful things and profoundly useless things!

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.

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

Nowadays, most women just assume they have a right to be in the workplace, and any kind of discrimination they suffer is sort of more creeping.

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.