I love the solitary, romantic idea of writing.

I can't remember a time when I didn't want to be an actor. It has just always been an inevitability on some level.

We can't constantly tell stories of heroes. We have to hear the other stories, too, about people in dire straits who make bad choices.

As a child I loved ghost stories.

If I'm going to be honest about it, I think men get to do this sort of thing all the time. You look at countless performances by great male actors who get to play the whole gamut of human emotions. Women aren't regularly allowed to do that, and I don't know why people are so frightened by it.

In high drama or high tragedy or anything, it's not really human unless there's some humor at the same time. And vice versa. So I guess I tend to gravitate towards projects which tread a dodgy tightrope between two things, which aren't really one or another.

I'm not consciously avoiding doing a lot of period drama, but I don't really seek it out either.

It's so rare that I get to do something in my own accent in my own hometown.

It sounds trite, but I like telling stories.

I don't want to constantly be making sacrifices. It feels like it's really difficult for the films I dream about making to turn up.

As someone who works and travels as much, you could feel... A bit rootless?

It doesn't matter how much polite self-deprecating fluff you have on the outside if you don't have a steely something in the middle that says, 'You know what, I'm actually really, really good at this, and this is what I can do, and I'm going to do it.'

There are a lot of movies about misfits that are quite cool, that kind of glamorize it on some level. I think there are fewer films, certainly with a lady at the center, about the agony of what it's like to feel like you're not accepted, and you're different, and somehow you're weird.

My friends have noticed that if I suddenly go through a couple of months' unemployment, there seems to be a correlation that I don't ever tend to wear the same outfit twice. There will be such strange combinations of clothes because I'm probably a bit creatively stifled, so it's coming out in my wardrobe.

I think it's a bit short-sighted to play any character and not explore, in some respects, the way they act when things get really bad.

You sit there, and you argue and you argue, and you sort of bully the hell out of the text until you're quite sure what it's revealing, and then you perform it.

It's not like I particularly have an interest in creepiness for creepy's sake.

I was quite quiet as a kid. I sat around watching people.

I was a sort of New York intellectual when I was 16. I wanted to dress like Annie Hall when I was 18.

When I was 22, I thought I couldn't wear heels because of my height.

I've been listening to 'Chapo Trap House' - they're quite radical. Every time I listen to it, my brain feels opened up.

I don't think I can boast about him. 'Hey, my dad is a British institution; he's done all these incredible things and I'm really proud of him.' There is a certain baggage that comes with that in England.

If I sat around thinking about acting all day, I'd lose my mind.

I don't think it's helpful to put them all in a box and say people are evil and freaks because they have gotten to the point where they have fallen out of the community of what it is to be a human being. That's worthy of investigation.