Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My main ambitions, really, are in the theatre.
I love science fiction. I read a lot of science fiction.
I can't spend the rest of my life being pretty in a bonnet.
Acting is a strange job because your control is very limited.
I love '30 Rock.' Absolutely love it. It's a game-changing show.
We live in a society where children are expected to become adults overnight.
Postwar Europe was morally stagnant, and there was a lot of neo-conservatism.
I think with the best actors, emotion is something that has no kind of check in them.
Motherhood so often comes in conflict with women's capacity to express and live their own lives.
I'm an actor. And like a lot of actors, it's very important that everybody loves you all the time.
I've worked with actors who tell everyone what to do in the scene - that makes me go pretty atomic.
I'm fundamentally a busy person; I spend my time doing useful things and profoundly useless things!
I wish I was a more adventurous person in a way. But actually, security is a really big deal for me.
The last thing a director needs is an actress who feels an ownership towards a particular character.
You don't have to conform to a very specific aesthetic today, whereas 1950s women definitely had to.
Films about women and their concerns are seen as frivolous, limited and, most damaging of all, niche.
I would argue that something dark is lurking between the sexes, and that it is seeping out into cinema.
I want people to think I'm sexy, but to know also that I've got an ordinary body and not feel intimidated.
I can only do something that my sister or my daughter, if I have one, could watch and feel positive about.
The worst thing you can do as a performer is to judge your character in any way, positively or negatively.
If you are an actress in L.A., on your 40th birthday they should just hand you the keys to the lunatic asylum.
I don't really want to play parts that I think are not fully developed or fleshed out, especially with female roles.
As a kid, I really loved 'Jane Eyre,' I used to fantasise that the past was so much better and my lifetime was crap.
I cheated at the Model United Nations when I was 13 and had to get up and apologise in front of the whole conference.
There are people who you see on screen and think, 'Wow, that's a slim person,' and in the flesh they look nearly dead.
I wouldn't want to direct - I think that's a very different job. You have to be a very specific type of person to do that.
I don't really want to do things that I feel like are going to send out a message that I don't really want to sign up for.
I just don't believe you're capable of being an actor unless you have a desire to experience your emotions in a public way.
The point of being a movie star is that people cast you in a role. Actors tie themselves in knots trying to get out of that.
I have always been interested in gender politics, so I'm not that keen on doing things that don't represent a truth about women.
I'd actually really love to review books and films and plays, but you can't be an artist and a critic. I would love it if I could.
I realise there's an innate paradox in promoting oneself on the one hand and saying, 'Oh, I don't want to be famous,' on the other.
I get quite disappointed that we're still telling stories that I think are problematic in terms of what they're saying about women.
I have a very strong, probably slightly aggressive personality, and so that just ends up coming out regardless of what I try to do.
A passion for any novel, and any character, can crystallise your ideas when you really need to be as open as possible as a performer.
Increasingly, it's actresses doing the big fashion advertising campaigns, and now there's no distinction between actresses and models.
I get grumpy about the innate conservatism of our tastes; I love bold theatre, and I get annoyed when a heritage piece is really successful.
If I have to spend prolonged periods of time in a trailer, I go mad. Stuck in a metal box doing nothing, I lie there paralysed with boredom.
Our conception of 1950s underwear is a lovely vintage aesthetic, but actually, wearing stockings with no elastic and a girdle was heavy duty.
Women don't question themselves when they enter into a story that has male characters, but men do question the validity of a female narrative.
Nowadays, most women just assume they have a right to be in the workplace, and any kind of discrimination they suffer is sort of more creeping.
Normally, when youre working on something, there are other characters that you have alliances with, and you have unified goals with some characters.
Normally, when you're working on something, there are other characters that you have alliances with, and you have unified goals with some characters.
I was brought up with a very strong sense of what can happen if your society starts to chip away at the small victories women have won for themselves.
I think one of the reasons I've done so much period work is because I feel so depressed by how society chooses to represent women in contemporary work.
I was mad until I was about 25. Completely out of control with my emotions. Everything that happened to me was a tragedy. I've been much happier over 25.
It's hard for actors to have to deal with the fact that they pour so much into their character, but the audience might have a negative assessment of them.
When I was a child, I always wanted to be funny and to please people in my family. As you grow up that instinct becomes more refined, but it's still there.
Someone like David Tennant is able to embrace people's love for 'Doctor Who' in a totally positive way. I have huge admiration for people who are able to do that.
Female ambition is such a complicated thing to play because it is an aggressive quality, and people respond very badly to women exhibiting any kind of aggression.