Here was someone who had a very true and affecting voice, who really did seem to be reporting from the front lines and doing it with the sort of guileless intensity of the talented innocent.

I chose this one for the volume of the rooms. When I was a kid in Paris we had rooms like this and there's a lot of objects that belonged to my parents and grandparents that then became mine. There's a picture of an armchair whose arms are sprouting hands; it's a rather scary looking picture that my parents were very fond of.

She's really clever and subversive. It's very difficult to describe glittery people and she does it very well.

Which were not about being applauded as you made your entrance to the opera. They were about crying in your room, feeling lonely, hoping for sex.

I wanted to be the conduit for somebody else's experiences, filtered through me, and passed on to other people. Which is the job description, really.

Producing is a wonderful foil to being an actor: acting being largely about getting out of my head, being present, a little irresponsible, whilst producing is the polar opposite. You need other players to act; you can't act in a void, but producing is about making something out of nothing - conjuring a thought or an idea into reality.