All acting is an act of imagination. You are simply conjuring up imaginary circumstances in your mind and responding truthfully to them.

I feel so grateful to my mother and father for a happy childhood. There are things I now understand that they were able to give me that are very special.

I would always play the baddie, incidentally.

I always found the extraordinary loss of life in the First World War very moving. I remember learning about it as a very young child, as an eight- or nine-year-old, asking my teachers what poppies were for. Every year the teachers would suddenly wear these red paper flowers in their lapels, and I would say 'What does that mean?'

The thing that keeps you grounded is doing the thing you love.

I think cruelty is just loneliness disguised as bitterness.

For myself, for a long time... maybe I felt inauthentic or something, I felt like my voice wasn't worth hearing, and I think everyone's voice is worth hearing. So if you've got something to say, say it from the rooftops.