I remember the first film I did, the lead actor would, in between scenes, be reading a newspaper or sleeping and I'd think, 'How can you do that?' But it's so exhausting, you can't be 'on' 12-14 hours a day.
I think that the benefit of playing someone like Queen Elizabeth is that so much has been written about her, and there's so much speculation about her - was she a hermaphrodite? She's so mythologised, and there are a lot of images of her.
I have a very healthy relationship to my work, and I find that if a scene is working, no matter how intense it is, you have the catharsis on screen, and you can let it go. I think it's, if at the end of the day you feel like you haven't cracked it, that's when you go home and it's more difficult to switch off.
No one wants to see me struggling to get a horse under control because I can't ride it. And no one wants to see me not knowing how to deal with the psychological makeup of the character.
Once you get an offer from Steven Soderbergh, you just do anything you can to make it fit.
I've been pretty lucky in the leading men department.
I think the more you do as an actor, the more facility you have to switch on and off.
There's many things that you can do with your life. It doesn't necessarily - I think if you're in a creative sphere, or if you're hungry for experience, then those experiences don't necessarily happen like rungs of a ladder or in a linear way.
I think the only thing I knew for sure is that I wanted to, whatever I did, I wanted to travel with my work, an adventurous spirit.
I've been mostly influenced by experiences in the theater growing up.
When I emerged from drama school, I had no expectation that I would ever work in film.
Playing the lead in a film where you shoot for three months away from home is not an easy thing for me when my children are in school and my husband is running a theatre company.
I think the atmosphere on set really comes from the material, but also the director.
Obviously, if Woody Allen calls and says he wants you to read a script, of course you read it.
Woody Allen is a great dramatist and a great comedian.
I think if you're too embroiled in the need to relate too closely to the character, then you start to judge the character for the audience rather than to present it to the audience for their enjoyment and them to mull over the questions that the characters present.
Before I made a film, I thought it was easy.
There is not a lot of separation between work and home life.
I think at the prospect of bringing children into the world, your mortality comes very much to the forefront, absolutely.
When I see daughters with their fathers I wonder what that would be like, although not in a way that immobilises me.
