I'm not used to being asked what I want to talk about. That's why I'm an actress. Get told what to do, stand on the mark, say your words, wear this, look this way, look that way.

Successful films are very dangerous things.

Movies make you immortal and ageless.

Buy, buy, buy, buy! They want to grab you and trap you and turn you into little Elizabeth Hurleys.

Exoticism can give you an edge: it makes people assume you're cleverer than you are and gives you the upper hand.

I do consider myself as being French, I suppose.

I was very lost as a teenager. Which is a horrible way to feel.

After a long time with someone, you realise you've been thinking for two.

I wouldn't want you to see me all the time on the screen, because I get bored of it myself!

I am so bored with seeing stories about a mature man of 65 falling in love with a beautiful girl of 32.

In fact, in many ways my mother was quite hippy-dippy, serving macrobiotic food and reading 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.'

Everyone loves to hate a spin doctor.

French culture takes ageing very seriously. There's much less ageism than in Anglo-Saxon countries.

I'm very good at forgetting people.

I can't get into all that physical stuff of having to have flawless skin... Sometimes you see people and it looks like someone's got an eraser and made their face a little blurry - their traits seem to go out of focus.

Having a leading man who is actually prettier than you are is quite upsetting.

Boarding school is a wicked thing.

I never raise my voice!

I just don't see very many films. Because I make them.

I don't want to have to be pretty. I don't want to have to be adorable.

I tend to do things that I'm very frightened of. That's what I do.

I have a feeling I will work for a long, long time. I like it a lot... and I don't know. I just have a feeling that I'm going to be one of those people who go on for ever.

Men don't fall in love with me - only young ones.

If you make a film about a pig farmer in Wales and you are a huge hit as the pig farmer's wife, the next thing is you'll be asked to do a film about a sheep farmer in Scotland.

I find it difficult to explain, but I'm quite ashamed of being an actress.

Seeing The English Patient is wonderfully draining, but imagine acting in it for six months.

Making films can be absolutely fantastic, but it can also be incredibly dull. You spend the whole day sitting by yourself in your trailer and then you get called to deliver one sentence - then you're told to come back and do it again at 5:30 the following morning.

I mean, if you're being directed very precisely by somebody who has admiration and who's really smart, it's great. If you're being told what to do by a nincompoop - and luckily that hasn't happened very often - it can be very frustrating.

I'm not at all fed up with British films, but I am fed up with playing upper-class people.

The parts I've been most successful in are the ones I've desperately, desperately wanted.

I think I'm inspired mostly by other artists that aren't actors, like writers or singers or artists, for being so brave.

I never go straight to the point if I can go the most difficult way. Why be simple when you can be complicated?

People are always saying, English, English, English rose, and I just feel so completely different.

Most films seem to be about a man and a women falling in love at some point and once you pass forty-five, it's almost disgusting to fall in love.

People accuse me of being Methody, but I'm not at all. The one thing I don't want people to see is me. I don't want them to be able to recognize my faults and failures and qualities, and I won't use those things to spark off emotions or to illustrate.

As actors, we're always asked to portray and react to these extreme circumstances, otherwise it's not interesting. They are agonizing things to think about.

I was happy, I wasn't beaten, and I lacked nothing. But it wasn't what people expect - it was very much sort of pinching and scraping. I don't know how my mother did it.

I just get so fed up with seeing the same things written about me. If I see the words 'ice queen' attached to me, I feel like banging my head against the wall. There's this perception that I can only be in a film if I have a glass of champagne in my hand and a stately home in the background.

At school, I always wanted to belong to a gang, and no one would have me. So I'd have make my own gang, but with everybody else's leftovers.

When you make a film, you sign a contract with somebody, and it's not only legally binding but morally binding. You agree to give this man a certain number of weeks of your life, and you just go for it as much as possible. Because, whatever happens, the film is going to come out, so you might as well try very hard to make it a good one.

I find it very difficult to be two different characters at the same time - actress and mother.

It takes a long time to appreciate one's parents.

I was terrible at school.

I'm very lazy!

I'm a late developer.

My children are lovely. They're perfect.