Acting is about communicating what it is like to be human: the pain, the laughs, the misery, the joy. I suppose I am searching to have it all.

Usually, when you first start out, you're so grateful to get anything that you just sort of take it and say: "Thank you very much." You're too afraid to even mention the money because it's embarrassing.

I think it's OK to play to your strengths, and if I have a quality of Englishness that people like, I won't hide that. I'm probably not going to play a junkie and that's OK because there are other people who will do it better. A view that's been held for a long time is that the best way to prove oneself as an actor is to play the grittiest roles out there. I don't agree with that.

We, Brits, need to be sort of loosened up. And there's some transfer overseas, I think the more American fare that comes to the U.K., the more cross-fertilization there is that's perhaps changing.

I always think that the people who have the hardest time in the spotlight are the people who have unearned fame, like the girlfriends of people who are famous or people who become figures of attention, not through their own merit.

I've got friends who are pyrotechnics who do big fire shows, so I'm really fascinated by that.

I don't think RADA wanted me, actually. When I was at Oxford I had a boyfriend at Central [School of Speech and Drama] and it looked like the most fantastic life, but I think not going makes you more free. Nothing can teach you what it's like to work on a film set, and the best education there can be for an actor is to walk up the street and observe human nature.