I've got an overactive, analytical brain. I get frustrated, impatient, angry with myself. I swear at myself a lot.

I just want a quiet life. I think that's what everybody says when they get older.

I am simply not such a slave to my vanity, and I don't want to be, because as you get older you really have to start accepting the inevitable.

At the beginning of my acting career, I worked for two seasons at the RSC and spent a lot of time in the Cotswolds exploring Shakespeare's countryside. It's my kind of English landscape, with its tiny villages and one-room thatched pubs.

I try to live my life as honestly as I can, and the last thing I want is to pretend to be something I'm not. To pretend to myself I am a sex symbol would somehow be dishonest. I'd feel, in my heart, that I were behaving artificially and that's the last thing I want to do.

The advantage of age is that you swap youth for wisdom. You're so full of insecurities when you're young. 'Who am I? What do I have to do for people to like me?' You get caught up in things. You get very emotional about things.