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.

The job of an actor is the same in all of them, really. I mean, you're just creating a character that you hope people will believe, so it doesn't make that much of a difference really.

As a woman, you feel that you shouldnt want to better yourself against others. Ambition has become such an ugly word, hasnt it?

I know I’ve got loads that has never been tapped.

I'm probably not going to play a junkie and that's OK because there are other people who will do it better.

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.

I think actors have to have clear goals in term of fitness, I think it is very important. I did yoga very seriously and I think that is a wonderful exercise. I take tennis lessons, and I swim a lot.