If you're a woman doing classic theater, the big roles are often destroyers. I've played Hedda Gabler, Lady Macbeth, some of the Chekhovian heroines, Electra, Phaedra - they're all powerful women, but they're forces of negativity.

There are so many huge roles in the theatre: if you've got the option to play Hedda Gabler on stage, why wouldn't you choose that over a three-line part in a Hollywood film as somebody's maid or somebody's wife or somebody's best friend?

We like the wrong sorts of girls, they wrote. They are usually the ones worth writing about.

I am so longing to be domestic,, cooking stew, gardening, hopefully having some children, painting, sitting still in one place.

When you are up close to an opera singer, hearing this incredible volume of noise coming from a human being - it's beyond belief.

I don't like, and I've never been very good at, close-up shots. As soon as you have the camera right there in front of you, it feels like you're in a different reality from the person you are acting with; you lose any real connection with them.