In my early 20s, I studied history and politics, and I really thought that perhaps I would devote my life to that.

I never grew up thinking, 'One day I will play so and so' because I wasn't expecting to be an actor at all.

Acting is an escape from the boring person that I am in real life.

My plays have been strange from the beginning, and they never got unstrange.

A play presents a self-enclosed little world for the audience to examine. It's an opportunity to look objectively at a group of people, to assess them, to react to them, and to measure oneself against them, to ask 'Am I like that?'

Interestingly, the actress who, in her own persona, may be gentle, shy, and socially awkward, someone whose hand trembles when pouring a cup of tea for a visiting friend, can convincingly portray an elegant, cruel aristocrat tossing off malicious epigrams in an eighteenth-century chocolate house.

My personal life is lived as 'me,' but my professional life is lived as other people. In other words, when I go to the office, I lie down, dream, and become 'someone else.' That's my job.