I want to see craggy old faces on the telly. I find them infinitely more fascinating than pretty young ones.
— Rachael Stirling
I was a bit of a backstage baby, but I wasn't at all precocious, and there was never a light bulb moment when I decided to go on the stage.
Scotland was home to me from when I was 12 up until I was 22. I decided to drop my English bit, and when anyone asked where I came from, I always said Scotland. It really shaped the fibres of my being.
If you've got 15 actors on stage who are all trying to shine a light on themselves, they are all trying to outshine each other. Whereas if you have 14 of those actors trying to shine a light on one person, and each of them is trying to make the other look good, you have a much more interesting process.
I take pleasure in discovering resourcefulness inside me.
I like cake, I swear a lot, and I hardly ever go to the hairdresser. I don't think I'm a movie star.
The theatre always felt like home, and it does to this day. When I do screen acting, I miss telling a story from beginning to end, as you do nightly on stage. I love that relationship with the audience and how it changes each night.
When going out on a date, I think there are certain old-fashioned manners that I still enjoy. I don't mean that as an anti-feminist comment. I just mean it as a pro-women comment. There must be a place for us to exist and our differences to exist without one taking away from the other.
I panicked in my 20s and 30s about whether I was doing the right thing. I was an excited puppy, wanting to please people and feeling guilty that I'd had a privileged education and an acting career.
I love growing older. Normally, I don't bother with make-up. This face in the mirror is changing. I've got new lines from smiling at the sprog so much.
My pa is a brilliant, charming man. We go out and play together and laugh a lot. He has a twinkle in his eye.
My instinct is to surround myself with the company of wise, witty, wonderful women, and I have a great bank of female friends of all ages.
You're in this heightened emotional state from the beginning of the play. It's like when you first have your heart broken.
I did ballet as a child and started again seven years ago. I love that you hear this exquisite music, and for a moment, you feel like a thing of beauty; it's changed my awareness of my body.
I do have strong feelings about the aristocracy: they serve a purpose, but it's a sort of insular strand of society.
When you're on the verge of depression, a good leveller is to put one foot in front of the other and do some manual labour.
She was just Ma, and I didn't grow up in some kind of acting dynasty: Orson Welles didn't come round and give me a piggyback; Vivien Leigh never read me a bedtime story. It was just my mum and our housekeeper, whom I adored, and after that, it was boarding school.
I feel sexier in my 40s than I did in my 20s and 30s.
I always hate it when I hear actors talking about the process of what they do, so I'll keep my thoughts to myself.
My mum was working in London, so I went to school there until I was 12. But every holiday would be in Scotland, and when I went to boarding school, I'd either be there or Scotland.
There is a sense of shame that comes with unemployment. I didn't become a movie star, and I was a size 14.
I eat healthily, I do ballet and exercise, and I'm toned and tight, but I take up space, and I don't aspire to anorexia.
I'm not really Bond girl material, and that's fine by me. I'm a grafter; I'm not a star.
I was always drawn to standing up in front of people.
I suppose I'm quite manly in lots of ways, but I like to be made to feel like a woman.
'Ambitious' is seen as a dirty word, especially when it comes to women. But what being ambitious actually means is to achieve distinction in your chosen field.
My mum says I never had tantrums. I had elongated and very complicated tea parties in my cot, and I was sort of talking, I guess, quite young, and I would say, 'Oh, how lovely to see you, do come in!' I'd have these theatrical tea parties by myself with my imaginary friends.
I didn't grow up or learn how to fully serve myself until I got my head down in the theatre.
I really resent how expensive everything is in London.
Not to harp on too much about Ma, but it's a misconception that she is formidable. She calls herself a patsy.
Just laughing a lot would be the most important thing in a relationship to me. And a smattering of trust. A dollop of laughter - and an icing of trust.
I want to be around when I'm 60; I don't want to be some flash in the pan.
If you aren't hot in Hollywood, you feel like you're in Siberia.
My mum is still totally rocking it. She's appearing in 'Game of Thrones,' which is massively cool.
There's a bit of a Bertie Wooster about my father. He's very easy-going, he never judges people, and we get on brilliantly.
If you get asked to play a part that makes you feel frightened, then you have to do it. 'Medea' is the opportunity of a lifetime.
My dad's Scottish, and I always used to say I was, too.
I remember I went to audition for the first Daniel Craig Bond film, 'Casino Royale.' I was there in this Versace dress, and I remember looking in the mirror, and I couldn't have felt less like a Bond girl if I tried.
I was not one of those children hanging on Ma's coat-tails following her round sets. I'd go to the theatre after school if she was working, but I didn't even know what an agent was.
I seem to be able to go from part to part without being recognised, which I like. When I was little, I resented it with every fibre of my being when Ma was recognised. Another way of looking at celebrity, though, is it's being famous for being brilliant at something.
In my bones, I feel like a Scot. I always have. My mum's from Doncaster, so whatever that is as a combination of Scotland and Yorkshire. It isn't southern.
I have never met anybody who likes 'The Detectorists' that I don't like.
I used to worry about the lack of roles for women over 40. But suddenly, everyone has realised it's interesting to have a drama with a woman at the centre of it.
My dear dad always tried to introduce me to children of his friends, but I just never took to them. Those were the people we were shoved with at school dances, usually Eton boys because it was the cleverest boys' school, and ours was supposed to be the cleverest girls' school.
I was raised to please people in authority, and I'd also come from a sheltered boarding school, so I was very naive and young for my years.
I do panic when I'm out of work, and there have been long periods of that. And I'm not a good auditionee. I talk myself out of jobs in front of the director and suggest other people who would be better.
I was brought up playing games and still do ferociously. I once played Connect Four on set with Bill Nighy and Richard E. Grant for so long that the assistant director got cross.
Having brothers - I love that. They don't take any rubbish, and they beat you up if you've been misbehaving.
I know I'm not a hotly in-demand movie star, but I'm good at my job. And I want to keep working for the next 40 years.
I want the kind of feminism that allows me to have a voice and to compete on equal terms with men yet still, potentially, to have one of them hurl me over their shoulder and carry me off somewhere, because I still find proper, old-fashioned masculinity deeply attractive.
