I've worked opposite so many male actors whose egos have been so delicate that it was just so hard to do the work.
— Andrea Riseborough
I grew up in the suburbs outside of Newcastle, and there were blank walls, and there was a lot of space to imagine - the fields and the motorways - so I used to sit and talk to myself as different people.
I think, sometimes, you can just get really burnt out on something you enjoy doing and feel like the sponge is completely wrung dry.
We need to band together in solidarity. There's so many portions of our community that are under-represented. You rarely see disabled actors on movie posters or black men or Latino guys.
Both of my grandfathers fought in the Second World War, and my great-grandfather died at the Somme in the First World War. I never truly believed that the War just finished and everyone was happy-clappy, brought out the bunting, and felt everything was okay again. That's definitely not my impression of the fall-out of war.
As an actor, you want to know if you're keeping a secret or telling the truth.
I've played a mother before, but it's always been a very young child, which is closer to what I can imagine my own life looking like.
Shakespeare was the thing that started me off on that train, you know, and every one of his plays. There are so many different characters, and the wonderful thing about being in an all-girls school was I got to play them all, you know. So I got to play Mercutio and Oberon and Malvolio - it was great.
'Venus,' which is a Roger Michell film - my first scene was with Peter O'Toole, and I cried. That was basically my part. I came in, cried in a white wig, and then left.
I tend to be overly responsible for other people's feelings.
I don't relate to people that look like me. I find it deeply unsatisfying to play a version of myself. It was something I had to figure out really early on, when I was at RADA, because I was being cast, over and over again, as the young, virginal thing. When I left RADA, I was on an absolute mission to never wear make-up.
There's always hope, and there's always despair.
I'm an odd mixture. I'm a sort of Geordie punk who started in classical theatre. It means nobody ever knows quite where to put me, but I like that.
I am a Graham Greene fan - I'm just a ferocious reader. I read an awful lot when I get the time.
Puberty is an extremely traumatic process even if you don't realize it. It kind of lives with you for like 10 years.
I've always thrown like a girl.
I think, really, what I'm interested in is whole women, real people.
Sexual inappropriacy in my industry? Absolutely. Almost every week.
I play myself every day, and it's quite boring.
I think it's really hard to move between genres, and I think, especially in Britain, we're very judgmental about it - me included. I know that when an actor comes out with some poetry or an album, I think, 'Oh crikey, what's this going to be like?'
I can walk into meetings now and ask for equal pay, and the people will listen to me. They may not give it to me, but I will be listened to. That's huge.
David Suchet's Poirot was very charming, and, when I'm away in the U.S., those series remind me of being in Britain and being British on a Sunday night.
Someone who's a great hero of mine and has become a friend is Patti Smith.
We worked with David Thibodeau, who wrote a book about Waco, on which the series is based. He's one of the nine survivors.
I really enjoy picking up the physical rhythm of somebody else, speaking with their voice. I've never done in anything in my own voice, and I can't imagine what that would be like. It would be weird, I guess.
Tracey Emin's 'Strangeland' made me see that everything I have to be creative is inside of myself.
Women are really complex and totally enigmatic. Humans are really complex, but in film, we've only ever seen that with men. We've seen antiheroes time and again with male characters.
I always do a lot of work around characters to make them real people because, oftentimes, they really are a sliver of a person. Even with truly wonderful writers, women characters are there to emote, and they're often incredibly chaste or worthy. Or they're a 'different type of woman', which is the worst.
I can't tell you how disheartening it is to be told to go home because the director is filming you from behind and you don't have the right kind of body. As an actress, to be told that... Well, it's just a very odd set of circumstances.
I think the most important thing when you're telling a story is to just tell the story as best as you possibly can.
I've always worked very hard.
Sometimes you need to break away from something in order to know how much you need or want it.
There's something really simple and idyllic about living in a house very close to the water.
Often, I'll read a script and the female character's an extension or serves some sort of purpose in terms of the male character's narrative and it just isn't fully formed. But they will be very beautiful. Whether a secretary or a doctor or a vet, they will be very beautiful.
You know those bumpers in the two lanes when you go bowling? I go out there with two of them, metaphorically, every day.
I've always been so confused about being a girl. Not in a Bruce Jenner way, just... there's that expectation where you walk into a room, and it's like, Is it OK to be a woman?' Or, you know, you're looking for your keys in the back of a cab, and sometimes the driver can treat you like you've had a lobotomy.
I'm still wearing Doc Martens. I'm sure that you can have a baby and wear Doc Martens, but... Maybe I'll be the first person to give birth in Doc Martens!
My grandparents were deeply affected by war, and it was obvious that the men who fought were horribly affected, as were the women who remained at home.
We all grew up aware of Agatha Christie; there is no writer more prolific than her in England.
I worked on 'Happy-Go-Lucky' for seven-and-a-half months, and I'm in it for two minutes - largely because Sally Hawkins turned left instead of right.
As a woman, on any film or any show, we do most of the emoting.
I get scared of really simple things and not scared of big things.
I have quite a collection of ironic band T shirts.
Transformation as a female actor is allowed up to a certain extent - as long as they can still recognize you on a red carpet. For a woman to be a shape-shifter, and to be that malleable in spirit, is really not OK with the patriarchy.
It's hard for us to imagine, as humans, that we'll become less powerful. But it'll be healthier for the planet and for the eco-system if that does happen. If humans are going to merge with machines, then let's get on with it. I love humans, but I also love dinosaurs - I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have wanted them to die out, either.
When I was younger, I used to try to fit in, but now I'm much more comfortable with just being myself.
You can't tell what's going to fulfill you in different stages in your life.
I've worked with so few female directors.
I don't read reviews, and it's not because I don't think I can learn something, I'm sure I could learn a lot. I just that I feel very passionately about the work and especially when you're doing theater, you really only need one director and when you read reviews, you feel like you have twelve, because you respond to them, naturally.
People are fascinating. They're so unique and I think what's more fascinating is the reason behind the physical characteristic, the enigma, that's where the gold dust is.
