Actress

When I was doing 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' I was asked, 'If there was one part of your life that you could erase, what would it be?' And I was so stunned by that. I thought: 'Nothing.' I would keep all the good bits and the bad bits, because those things made me who I am.

I suffered from 'No one will ever fancy me!' syndrome, well into my teens. Even now I do not consider myself to be some kind of great, sexy beauty. Absolutely not.

My husband and I met in a house fire, basically.

I do have impossibly high standards.

I like the diversity that my children are exposed to every day.

The happiness I feel in having a family has brought me a real beauty.

I finally moved out of my parent's house. It was only fair to let my sister have her own room.

I am not a hypocrite.

It's very easy to be judgmental until you know someone's truth.

I won't allow magazines in the house. When I was younger, I wanted to have my hair cut like so-and-so in the class above me at school, not somebody in a magazine. You see young girls trying to dress like so-and-so because they've seen lots of pictures of them.

As a woman, especially when you have children, one gets so good at soldiering on - almost too good.

Whenever I go to L.A., the make-up artist or hairdresser will end up having a conversation about how fat they think they are, and I really just can't take it seriously at all.

I am not a hypocrite.

So I won an Oscar. It's amazing. I've got that for the rest of my life for a performance I am proud of. It nearly killed me. I am really proud of the film. That's it, moving on.

Weirdly, when I'm playing an English person, I feel like I've got nothing to hang on to, and it feels a bit strange and exposing.

You see, I was never a big fan of contemporary movies because they always make actresses and actors look too perfect.

I think it's very important to teach your children to struggle on some level.

I'm no stranger to the occasional dodgy juice, but it doesn't taste very nice and it is bloody boring. It's not a way to live.

By nature, I'm a very positive person, and because I'm happy in myself, and in my life, and I've got a great husband, and beautiful children, and I have a job that I love that calls for a certain amount of emotional expression, I get to realise a lot of my dreams and aspirations.

I think confidence does come with time, and I've been really surprised by that, actually.