Size zero doesn't make you happy and I'm not sure I have the discipline for Hollywood. I'm too much of a fan of chocolate and crisps.

Its really good to have so distinctive a name as an actress. No one ever forgets it. My sister and brother are called Perdita and Rollo. Actually, my family calls me Hollyhocks.

My parents wondered what to do with this insufferable show-off. They chose acting for me and I'm very grateful I can still make a living from it.

My father was a tyrant about reading, and that put me off books when I was little.

Politics is not a game for naive thinkers. You may go in as an idealist, but you certainly won't come out as one.

When 'Foyle's War' ended in 2010 after seven series, I was sad but not despondent. After all, ITV had already axed the show once in 2007, then brought it back due to public demand.

There are a lot of questions about whether architecture is art. The people who ask that think pretty tract houses are architecture. But that doesn't hold up.

The sun provides the moon with its brightness.

If you can't live it down, might as well live it up.

Any performance I do, I give 110 percent.

As a listener, I like a wide range of sounds.

Kick and claw all you like. Scream. Hit me. Curse the f*ck out of me. You won't sleep anywhere but with me tonight.

We have tried to fit man into abstraction, but he does not fit.

The better the actor, usually the safer you feel working with.

Only if we realise how sh*t we were at Blackburn can we improve.

My whole life has been a twenty years struggle between poetry and prose, or, if you like to call it so, Music and Law.