Filming is quite exciting because every day is different, but it can involve long hours standing around in chilly locations. Theatre is a very different challenge because every night you're striving to keep it fresh, even though you might have been performing the same play for months.

I'm an appalling flyer. I get very tense, although I no longer weep uncontrollably for no reason - I just sob if there's turbulence.

I grew up without the rose-tinted look at the profession many of my friends had, but I've been very lucky playing major roles in 'An Ideal Husband', 'Arcadia' and 'The Memory of Water'.

I get so nervous before I go on stage that I can never eat very much, so I'm always completely starving afterwards and dying for a bowl of pasta.

One of my earliest memories is of being about three and a half, climbing through the legs of a man who I didn't know was the famous actor, Patrick Magee.

The big thing that Moneypenny changed was the amount of charity work that I was able to be involved with.

Agatha Christie holds special personal memories for me because my mum, a television producer called Pat Sandys, had been the first person to persaude the Agatha Christie estate to put one of her stories on TV.