I can't think of anything better than being considered a poster girl for intelligent women.
— Rachael Stirling
I find the idea that some kids go into acting because of their parents butt-clenchingly embarrassing. I've gone out of my way to prove myself as a separate being. I don't want to be seen as a subset of someone else.
I suppose I'm what you'd called a character actress, so, often, my characters are quite extreme.
If I'd been an actor in the 1940s, I would have been in fashion.
I had been kind of quite porky and happy at boarding school and not self-conscious at all; then, suddenly, I found myself in auditions being examined, and it made me angry.
I love radio interviews; it's all about multitasking and, like all good women, I can do that.
I woke up famous for about a minute, then stopped being famous again.
The tabloids had a field day with 'Tipping The Velvet,' which was great for the viewing figures but not necessarily for the actors involved.
I always like a character who makes me laugh.
I remember typing up my dissertation sitting in a horse box - I didn't qualify for a caravan - on a set in Pinewood on my first film, 'Still Crazy.'
Kristin Scott Thomas is terrific. She has a career in France and a career in England: how cool is that? I wouldn't mind that.
I teach kids to read on a Saturday for this charity called Real Action. It's a voluntary school because lots of the kids around my area of London are from immigrant families and need extra help with reading.
I won't change the way I talk for anyone. I'll do it for work but not because I think someone will like me more if I take the edge off.
I fell upon Jenny Saville's work and loved these great big pieces she was painting, celebrating all things flesh and woman, and with great big Simone Beauvoir quotations written in mirror writing so you had to look at yourself in the pictures to read them.
I think if I'd been born ten years earlier when Ma was at the height of 'Avengers' fame, it would have been a different kettle of fish altogether, but she was very much a ma first and an actress second for my formative years.
