You have a lot more to give, the older you get. And you want to give it. I mean, some people want to give it. But there is a desire to pass down, to have a hand in the past and a hand in the future. There's a continuum.

It is always good to explore the stuff you don't agree with, to try and understand a different lifestyle or foreign worldview. I like to be challenged in that way, and always end up learning something I didn't know.

I know what people want to hear is the connection with the son, Roger, when you have a child. I would love to tell that there was an epiphany as to what it is to be a mom, but I didn't feel any difference there.

My castings sort of go in phases. There'll be several icy professional parts - a lawyer or a cop. And then there'll be the intelligent-but-wounded group and then the period things. It goes in sequence.

I enjoy learning about different periods and people, and then taking what's universal about the human condition and seeing where it matches up. No matter where you are, certain things unite everybody.

But I've also spread my net very wide. If there's one thing that I've done on purpose it's to take whatever job, so long as it's interesting and challenging, whether it's theatre, radio, TV or film.

What people can survive and what they don't survive is shocking to me. Someone can go to Iraq and be blown to bits and survive. Someone can trip and fall on the street and they die - that's that.

What I hope in my ideal world is that with each project, I'll either get to work with a really great script that would force me to grow, or work with a really great actor who will make me better.

We all have a limited amount and that it's a privilege to grow old. That's something that I think a lot of people have forgotten in this very fast-paced world where youth is overly celebrate.