Anna Friel

Onstage, there’s no hiding; you either can or can’t act. There’s no second take.

I look at being an actress as being like a mummy: You’re bandaged up and preserved as soon as you start making other people money.

You can see when an actor gets bored: Their eyes go dead. I promised myself I’d never let that happen. If it does, I’ll go and live on a desert island for a year.

David is 13 years my senior and has much more experience.

And the most important thing – apart from telling a good, believable story, and being a true character – is to be someone the audience will care about, even if you’re playing a murderer or rapist.

For me personally, everything is on a kiss.

Being a mother gives you an incredible feeling of empowerment, you think if I can go through such pain and that level of sleep and still operate and not be grumpy you can do anything. It can be quite scary, you can’t function your brain, forget your vocabulary.

Well ironically my last three roles have all been a mother. One was a Canadian film where the baby was taken away because she is a drug addict, in Irish Jam I play a mother to a four year old. I think in the future I’ll be able to handle the role with a lot more depth.

People became more interested in my love life than in me, and that has a certain effect. You start to feel very empty and worth nothing, you start to become a piece in a board game you never wanted to play.

It’s really important to draw the line on what we do as actors.

The doctors say it dates back to a film where I had these huge prosthetic breasts because my character was breast-feeding. The weight of them, and of the baby, did my back in.

I’ve always chosen incredibly different roles and things that are quite offbeat. That way you’re not limited.

Well it’s hard to bracket it like that because everyone always thinks you either go to America and you come back, fail or succeed, but it doesn’t work like that.

We will spend more time in America, we’re going to get a place in LA as hotels aren’t great for the baby.

For Closer, we’ve had five weeks. You go into every single word because it’s very, very concentrated dialogue.

I play a character every day of my life, and I don’t want to play a character as myself. They can judge me as an actress, not as a person. I’m not a spokeswoman for Anna.

I’ve been onstage once for one performance with four days’ rehearsal.

I want more children but for the next three years I want to act.

I have the most lovely, healthy bouncing baby, she was all very compact and the right size.

As long as she is talented enough and passionate about doing it herself then I will be happy and support her. I think I will be sensible – my parents said I could only do it if I got my education and so I had something to fall back on.

Now learning a bit more about footballers I think what they need to do well, is someone who really wants to stay in the background and just be a strong support.

I’ve never been onstage in my life.