I used to go to clubs and sing as myself but people weren't interested. And then I turned up as a woman and suddenly everyone was interested.

Actors are very emotional, whereas sports people are used to criticism.

My tights split while I was tap dancing in the West End in 1993.

When I was opening my first bank account, the person at the counter thought I was a girl.

My ears are too big.

I'm a workaholic.

I think women should be paid the same as men. That's for sure. But what would you say to a woman coming in after you've been in the job for 15 years when they've done absolutely nothing to earn it? I don't think that's right.

I like laying by the pool but I do tend to get a bit bored after a couple of days chilling out.

Strictly' is the most successful reality format in the world - it's in the 'Guinness Book of Records' - going to 38 countries. 'X Factor' hasn't done that.

If you really have a passion for something, you should follow it and listen to your inner voice.

I always love the court fool in Shakespearean times, in Henry VIII's time. The fool can say all kinds of stuff that the other people can't say, so I'm hoping I might take that role.

I never got to play as a child. All my spare time was spent working on my family's smallholding.

If you cut art from school, you're going to have a lot more looted shops.

Artists and scientists both think outside the box. They've got to come with genius experiments or ideas to expose the most interesting phenomena.

Artists and scientists are very close. They always have been, but I think we've just been divided out over the last few centuries into specialisms. Leonardo da Vinci was drawing helicopters and all kinds of things. We're artificially divided. I think we're closer than we think we are.

If I'm not doing the work I want, I usually suffer a psychological allergic reaction and get ill.

I had two great art teachers at school, but even they tried to tell me it was too hard a world. But that made being an artist even more attractive.

To make large, site-specific work as an artist is usually quite tortuous; there are so many boxes you have to tick.

I gave birth aged 45, which was a bit of a shock.

Driving a steamroller over an old trumpet or a teaspoon is no more destructive than taking a chisel to a lump of marble already torn from the landscape. But people don't see it that way because marble is considered noble.

A lot of my stuff just wasn't saleable. I still don't do private or corporate commissions. It becomes like interior design. I don't enjoy it. The process makes me feel physically sick.

If you conceal things, they become more charged.

If people say, 'You can't do that,' you can be sure I will do my utmost to do it.

I was my father's sidekick, in a way. He was a very dominant, forceful character.