I couldn’t watch Tom and Jerry. The cruelty was too much. I had all these strange images, of tiny animals, all mixed up.

I couldn’t watch Tom and Jerry. The cruelty was too much. I had all these strange images, of tiny animals, all mixed up.

Some people have a terrible stretch between family and work. It is a difficult thing to achieve.

I don’t like being out of the crowd. It’s lonely within a group.

I think comedy’s something you can’t learn. It’s an instinct, which makes it rather elusive.

I wanted above all else not to be like my mum.

I’m massively talented, and very, very beautiful in person; the public don’t really realise that.

It’s very strong after the birth. It’s extraordinary. You can’t watch anything to do with kids being harmed.

I’m more selective now I’ve got a family. I don’t want to work all the time. My daughter’s 12; I don’t want to miss out on her life. Soon she’ll be a teenager; she won’t want me around.

My grandmother lived with us for a short time while I was a child. Old people tend to be slightly more eccentric – they can behave the way they want.

I never had any acting heroes. I never really went to the theatre.

It seems that when you get to a certain age you almost give yourself permission to misbehave and say what you think. People allow it, with very old people.

The money isn’t a lure. I’ve done very well out of this business.

I don’t want to give up acting – it’s what I am.

As soon as I gave birth, it was as if you understand them. They become people, not kids. You start to identify with them. You see yourself in them.

I can understand why people get annoyed at being remembered for one thing, but a lot of actors aren’t remembered for anything. I don’t mind that.

I’d love to be in another film, but they haven’t asked me. I think it’s a shame but the prospects of me doing another one now are remote. Please do campaign on my behalf.

I don’t know if you can change things, but it’s a drop in the ocean.

I was always someone who lived in the future all the time, it was always the next thing – dreams of escape.

I’d like to think there’ll be too much of real life going on for me to want to do much acting.

Being a mother adds another emotional dimension, a feel for children that I didn’t have before I had one. They were a pain before.

I’m too young at 50. I’m not grown up yet. There’s part of everybody like that.

I keep seeing myself in my daughter, and I see my mother in me and in her. Bloody hell.

The characters do have a life of their own; it’s weird.

That’s why I’m an actress – escaping into a world.

I felt my mother about the place. I don’t think she haunts me, but I wouldn’t put it past her.

I was asked about doing a nude shoot for men’s magazine GQ. I thought it was the funniest thing I’d ever heard.

Suddenly, you are very much in the present, and you learn it’s really the place where you should always live.

I never wanted to become an actress because I’d read great literature or seen great Shakespeare. It was more just wanting to understand what the people were really like, why they said all the strange things they did.

I didn’t come into the business to get awards or titles.

Jane Austen was an extraordinary woman; to actually be able to survive as a novelist in those days – unmarried – was just unheard of.

I always loved my mother, felt loved, but she was judgmental. Her father in Ireland didn’t approve of women generally, and she took on his values. She believed her own mother was foolish.

I’m writing a novel about two actresses who go to New York, because that’s what I know about. One has lost touch with reality, disappears and is picked up by a man.

Stage is the most exciting. Film is lovely, because it’s like a family.

I was having my teens in my 30s.