I find it difficult to explain, but I’m quite ashamed of being an actress.

Seeing The English Patient is wonderfully draining, but imagine acting in it for six months.

I was happy, I wasn’t beaten, and I lacked nothing. But it wasn’t what people expect – it was very much sort of pinching and scraping. I don’t know how my mother did it.

I find it very difficult to be two different characters at the same time – actress and mother.

At school, I always wanted to belong to a gang, and no one would have me. So I’d have make my own gang, but with everybody else’s leftovers.

People accuse me of being Methody, but I’m not at all. The one thing I don’t want people to see is me. I don’t want them to be able to recognize my faults and failures and qualities, and I won’t use those things to spark off emotions or to illustrate.

If you’re feeling insecure and you need to feel special, the best place to go is somewhere foreign where people treat you as special because you’re different.

Movies make you immortal and ageless.

I never go straight to the point if I can go the most difficult way. Why be simple when you can be complicated?

People are always saying, English, English, English rose, and I just feel so completely different.

Having a leading man who is actually prettier than you are is quite upsetting.

I find it difficult to explain, but I’m quite ashamed of being an actress.

I’m not at all fed up with British films, but I am fed up with playing upper-class people.

There’s something incredibly sexy about sand and sweat and dunes photographed like women’s backs.

Buy, buy, buy, buy! They want to grab you and trap you and turn you into little Elizabeth Hurleys.