I used to go around looking as frumpy as possible because it was inconceivable you could be attractive as well as be smart. It wasn’t until I started being myself, the way I like to turn out to meet people that I started to get any work.

I’m intimidated every day I go on the stage and everyday I go on a movie set. It’s terrifying and I always want to reshoot the first day or the first week, I’m so terrified.

I wish I was born in that era: dancing with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, going to work at the studio dressed in beautiful pants, head scarves, and sunglasses.

There are a lot of women who live with pot-bellied pigs.

I used to go around looking as frumpy as possible because it was inconceivable you could be attractive as well as be smart. It wasn’t until I started being myself, the way I like to turn out to meet people that I started to get any work.

When I first met Sean Connery he was as charming and wonderful as I first anticipated. I left Rome thinking: even if I don’t do this, at least I have had a day with Sean.

I like to feel sexy. I know my husband thinks I’m sexy. I think he is too. But I don’t go out half-naked with ‘sex’ written across my back.

I was like any new bride, who said, ‘I’m going to cook for my man.’ In fact, once I started a small kitchen fire in a pan. Smoke was pouring from the pan, and I got really scared. Right next to our stove is a small fire extinguisher. You know, easy access.

I’d love to do a show in Vegas with drag queens. The tackier the better.

For marriage to be a success, every woman and every man should have her and his own bathroom. The end.

I think, especially in our business we meet a lot of people, and sometimes you spend so much time being nice to strangers, and so, you know, keeping a clear head and just being nice to each other. And that’s all the advice I can give.

All of a sudden I had a baby, because it went really quick. It was like, ‘Oh! I have a baby!’ So, it’s great. I’m just having a great time with my children. They’re here in New York with me.

In Hollywood everything is so documented. If you go for a drink with somebody, it’s passed around the world so quickly.

In Wales it’s brilliant. I go to the pub and see everybody who I went to school with. And everybody goes ‘So what you doing now?’ And I go, ‘Oh, I’m doing a film with Antonio Banderas and Anthony Hopkins.’ And they go, ‘Ooh, good.’ And that’s it.

To make it more familiar to me, I ended up treating my swordplay scenes like choreography. So it was, ‘One and two and three and four and five, and turn and step and down and up and lunge.’

I like women who look like women. I hated grunge. No one’s more feminist than me, but you don’t have to look as if you don’t give a – you know. You can be smart, bright, and attractive aesthetically to others – and to yourself.

Yes, I was in love with my husband at first sight and still am. We have the most solid relationship.

After Zorro, people spoke Spanish to me for ages. I’m Welsh but that movie instantly gave me a new ethnicity.

Words impress me. If a man can speak eloquently and beautifully to me, I just melt on the floor.

Everyone knows we get paid a lot of money, so why pretend otherwise?

I love my lawyer. I have to say that of course!

I do think I’m lucky I met Michael. Not just Michael Douglas the actor and producer with two Oscars on the shelf, but Michael Douglas, the love of my life. I really do think it was meant to happen.