 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 think comedy's something you can't learn. It's an instinct, which makes it rather elusive. |
| That's why I'm an actress - escaping into a world. |
| I keep seeing myself in my daughter, and I see my mother in me and in her. Bloody hell. |
| 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 was asked about doing a nude shoot for men's magazine GQ. I thought it was the funniest thing I'd ever heard. |
| 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. |
| Jane Austen was an extraordinary woman; to actually be able to survive as a novelist in those days - unmarried - was just unheard of. |
| 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'd like to think there'll be too much of real life going on for me to want to do much acting. |
| 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 don't know if you can change things, but it's a drop in the ocean. |
| I'm too young at 50. I'm not grown up yet. There's part of everybody like that. |
| I was always someone who lived in the future all the time, it was always the next thing - dreams of escape. |
| 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. |
| Suddenly, you are very much in the present, and you learn it's really the place where you should always live. |
| The characters do have a life of their own; it's weird. |
| I'm massively talented, and very, very beautiful in person; the public don't really realise that. |
| I don't want to give up acting - it's what I am. |
| 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. |
