In the past, when I saw bike messengers, I would just see them as individuals. Then, I realized that they're all tied together.

I never want to make any characters one-dimensional, especially as women can often be portrayed as the dark one or the evil one.

I always say a lot of fake friends are the ones I can't get into a fight with, because if I get into a fight with them, it's over.

I've always been so uninterested in playing any kind of archetype of some pure, innocent, virginal woman. I just don't believe it.

I watched tons of archive footage of princess Margaret and listened to the music she loved; that was really immersive and brilliant.

I love the Sixties and all those iconic women, Bridget Bardot and things like that, so I tend to lean towards those sorts of things.

I think very few shows have come into our industry and changed the tempo and the narrative of stories, and 'Once Upon a Time' did that.

When I was young, people would say I was ugly, but I never saw that. I would look in the mirror and say, 'They're idiots. You are so cute!'

The love of my life found me! That's how he would say it, anyway, since he claims he was attracted to my energy before I even turned around.

I hate the idea of massive fame. I think the scariest thing for an actor is when your name becomes bigger than your craft or what you can do.

My parents moved to the states when I was 6, so I was raised by my grandma in the Dominican Republic and didn't see them again until I was 10.

America was built by immigrants. Immigrants come here for work - to contribute and get to a better place. That's my story. It's a story of hope.

I love playing Rosie on 'Devious Maids,' and I think that if Rosie would have an NFL team to root for, she would also be a Cleveland Browns fan.

I've been really lucky to work with a lot of theater directors in the film, like Stephen Daldry on 'The Crown' and Richard Eyre on 'The Dresser.'

My favourite thing is cooking for my friends. There are 13 of us who all met at university. They come round once a week, and I make a huge lasagne.

I don't want to make things that are cynical and aggressive just because, oh my God, there's enough of that going on in the world without me adding to it.

I watched her do speeches, but the only footage we could find of [princess] Margaret was archive footage, which was of her public presentation of herself.

Growing up the way that I did - I grew up with a lot of cousins - you just have this imagination, and I love going and telling different stories. I'm a clown.

I feel I have a responsibility to carry out the immigrant story, since it's one that I hold very dear to my heart, since my story is similar in a lot of ways.

Here I am: I'm a girl from the Dominican Republic. I wanted to be a star, but I really didn't know what that was or how I was going to be able to accomplish it.

It's quite rare that you find something that you can quite literally have an absolute ball doing, as well as the tough stuff and the difficult stuff and the pain.

I went to a very academic school, but I never really quite... I think because not that many people were particular creative or arty, I felt a little bit different.

I've always been pretty indifferent towards the royal family. I went on a school trip once to Buckingham Palace, and all I can remember is that it was really boring.

I will always be the first Latina Cinderella, so I always have that to take with me, and I'm very proud of that. I believe that it was a life-changing experience for me.

I got into the entertainment world and started modelling when I was 15. When I told my parents that was what I was going to do for a living, it was very shocking for them.

I was very smart in school. I had straight As and was going to graduate high school at 16 and start college. My dad wanted me to be a lawyer because I was very opinionated.

We know all about actors and singers because they do interviews, but with the royals, everything's so tightly controlled. They live this strange reality behind closed doors.

I think if you have a good attitude and go in with no pressure or expectations, just for a chance to play with all these talented people and do your thing, then it's always a blast!

I do tend to find when you're playing characters, often - just for the time you're playing them - there are sides of your personality that get stronger because you draw on them more.

I think, a lot of times, when you're a first-time mom, you just want to be so careful, and you overanalyze things sometimes. But I think your first instinct as a mother is always right.

At the same time, [princess Margaret] had a fragility and an insecurity in who she was and her position, because her sister had always got the education ever since David [Edward VIII] abdicated.

My character on 'The Sopranos' was specific to being a single mother and being from Jersey. And being part of that season finale... wow. That show is always going to be world-renowned and iconic.

I started to really enjoy the fact that [princess] Margaret was an exhibitionist. Even on a day-to-day basis, Margaret's costumes were always so much more dramatic and bold than Elizabeth's were.

Family relationships are just so fascinating - how they shape you as a person, how you can wound each other, how you're imprinted in a way by your family and the conditions under which you grow up.

I don't want to know who he's been with or how many [women]. I do want to know that my man is not a virgin, because I want to know that he knows what he's doing. But I don't need to know how he's learned it.

My mom came to America when I was six years old, and I didn't live with them until I was ten. They worked really hard in factories, and my dad as a taxi driver, to be able to afford visas for my sister and I.

I always look at actresses who I most respect, and they make me think that you can make a choice in life. It's whether or not you choose to go down the route of publicising your personal life. I choose not to.

When I was auditioning for drama school and looking for a monologue, it was all, 'I'm whinging about my period or my baby that has died or my boyfriend...' Why can't you have a normal girl, talking about ideas?

You want to give your children better than what you had and make them feel like they have everything. But I think there is also a lot of value in making them work for things and allowing them to see other places.

For me, when my agents and reps send me a script, I read it through, just for the story purpose of it, and then I read it again to think of my character and see if it's something that I'm interested in bringing to life.

When I was growing up, I was running around; I was a little tomboy. So I was just running around trying to be an athlete and trying to reenact things from TV, but I wasn't really into reading comic books or anything like that.

I ended up getting kicked out of my house when I was 16, and I went off to college. When they actually saw that I was getting some kind of stability as far as having a career in this business is when they started coming around.

I feel people naturally have a brightness. When that is extinguished by circumstances - be it a wrong marriage or a situation that you cannot leave psychologically - there's something about that dying spark that I'm drawn to playing.

When I first started doing screen work, I thought, 'I'm not beautiful enough for this profession - all the actresses I watch on screen are gorgeous and beautiful goddesses, but I'm just a scrawny, scruffy girl from southwest London.'

I thought, 'If I go to uni, I can read and watch people and take many different subjects - take philosophy modules - and have time to travel in the summers,' which I did. I thought, 'I hope this will make me a better actor,' and it did.

I still get stage fright horribly. I still get nervous. I do tend to find when you're playing characters, often - just for the time you're playing them - there are sides of your personality that get stronger because you draw on them more.

Once you start [filming] you have researchers who are constantly giving you information. Ultimately it isn't about impersonating or trying to be an image of somebody and more trying to capture the spirit and the soul of the person somehow.

My characters are always unlucky in love. It's annoying, but perhaps there is something in me that is suited to characters that have a darkness. Maybe it's why I play such damaged people when I'm not particularly damaged myself, I would say.

Peter Morgan's writing is so much about what you don't say: you're saying one thing but there's 10 other things going on, and those are the best writers like Chekhov... they're masters at a sort of naturalism, and yet there is all the subtext.

My parents would always take me to the theatre, and I was bored a lot of the time. Loads of Shakespeare, and I didn't know what the hell was going on. And then, when I was 13, we went to see 'The Cherry Orchard,' and it changed everything for me.

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