I did The 'Acid Test' at the Royal Court, by Anya Reiss, who's the most wonderful, amazing female writer. She was only 19 when she wrote it. She wrote it about three girls in a flat on a Friday night, and that was magic because it was so rare to have three girls in your age group in a play. It just doesn't happen.
I love the idea of being an Aries.
I went to a very academic school, but I never really quite... I think because not that many people were particular creative or arty, I felt a little bit different.
I thought, 'If I go to uni, I can read and watch people and take many different subjects - take philosophy modules - and have time to travel in the summers,' which I did. I thought, 'I hope this will make me a better actor,' and it did.
I feel people naturally have a brightness. When that is extinguished by circumstances - be it a wrong marriage or a situation that you cannot leave psychologically - there's something about that dying spark that I'm drawn to playing.
Peter Morgan's writing is so much about what you don't say: you're saying one thing but there's 10 other things going on, and those are the best writers like Chekhov... they're masters at a sort of naturalism, and yet there is all the subtext.
We know all about actors and singers because they do interviews, but with the royals, everything's so tightly controlled. They live this strange reality behind closed doors.
You are what you think. I really believe that. And I don't think you ever stop doubting yourself.
I've been really lucky to work with a lot of theater directors in the film, like Stephen Daldry on 'The Crown' and Richard Eyre on 'The Dresser.'
My dad is a big extrovert - he's a doctor - but he always loved Shakespeare, and he took us to tons of theater.
When I first started doing screen work, I thought, 'I'm not beautiful enough for this profession - all the actresses I watch on screen are gorgeous and beautiful goddesses, but I'm just a scrawny, scruffy girl from southwest London.'
You're always one of the only girls, because there are so many male writers, and there are not enough good parts for women.
I don't see the point of grumpy people.
Family relationships are just so fascinating - how they shape you as a person, how you can wound each other, how you're imprinted in a way by your family and the conditions under which you grow up.
When I was auditioning for drama school and looking for a monologue, it was all, 'I'm whinging about my period or my baby that has died or my boyfriend...' Why can't you have a normal girl, talking about ideas?
My parents would always take me to the theatre, and I was bored a lot of the time. Loads of Shakespeare, and I didn't know what the hell was going on. And then, when I was 13, we went to see 'The Cherry Orchard,' and it changed everything for me.
I've always been so uninterested in playing any kind of archetype of some pure, innocent, virginal woman. I just don't believe it.
My characters are always unlucky in love. It's annoying, but perhaps there is something in me that is suited to characters that have a darkness. Maybe it's why I play such damaged people when I'm not particularly damaged myself, I would say.
My hair has been so wrecked over the years by various things.
