Actress

I really enjoy picking up the physical rhythm of somebody else, speaking with their voice. I've never done in anything in my own voice, and I can't imagine what that would be like. It would be weird, I guess.

I've always been so confused about being a girl. Not in a Bruce Jenner way, just... there's that expectation where you walk into a room, and it's like, Is it OK to be a woman?' Or, you know, you're looking for your keys in the back of a cab, and sometimes the driver can treat you like you've had a lobotomy.

There's always hope, and there's always despair.

Puberty is an extremely traumatic process even if you don't realize it. It kind of lives with you for like 10 years.

When I talk about work or my take on life, all the joyfulness and excitement never seem to make it in.

I'm an odd mixture. I'm a sort of Geordie punk who started in classical theatre. It means nobody ever knows quite where to put me, but I like that.

I can't tell you how disheartening it is to be told to go home because the director is filming you from behind and you don't have the right kind of body. As an actress, to be told that... Well, it's just a very odd set of circumstances.

I think, really, what I'm interested in is whole women, real people.

As a woman, on any film or any show, we do most of the emoting.

'Venus,' which is a Roger Michell film - my first scene was with Peter O'Toole, and I cried. That was basically my part. I came in, cried in a white wig, and then left.

Sometimes you need to break away from something in order to know how much you need or want it.

I've worked opposite so many male actors whose egos have been so delicate that it was just so hard to do the work.

When you're playing a romantic version of a real person, you're playing a version of the truth.