Once you move away from home, it's never quite the same again. You expect everything to be just as you left it, and it never is. It's almost the first step into adulthood, realising you've got to make your own way.

Sometimes the director will want you to write about the character, sometimes he'll want you to live in the location that the character is from or something like that, but I don't usually make a lot of notes or anything like that.

There's so many modern films where the fans take one side or the other. I'm hoping this isn't going to be like that; I'm hoping it isn't that kind of film at all. What I would love for the audience to take from it is to understand why she was so stuck in the middle and confused.

I appreciate the written word and spoken word more, but Atonement sort of established so much of me. It was a character that didn't really speak, and I found that a lot of the roles I was gravitating toward after that were kind of nonverbal.

I was born in New York, so I'd love to study at New York University.

I will always have a child in me. That is what Pete Jackson has got, what a lot of the directors I have worked with have. It is about knowing how to have fun and that is something I always want to hold on to.

I was 12 and I remember every­thing. I mean, I had done two films before that. The first was actually with Amy Heckerling. It was so brilliant to work with her on my first film. Atonement was the third one I'd done, and I remember how it felt to arrive on set every day. I remember how it felt to get my wig off at the end of the day. I remember how hot it was.