I like working on stage because there's something very immediate about it, that interaction with an audience where you immediately hear their reaction, or feel them, whether they're with you.

My parents were political, so it's definitely in my bones. Wherever I am, I always seem to get involved with politics. I think, once it's in your bloodstream, it's always there. I love it.

I think politics can no longer be assigned to parliamentary activity and it probably never could be. But politics with a small p and the history of trade union movement really interests me.

He makes me laugh, Mick! He tended to turn up when we were having lunch and entertain us all. He bought an Enigma machine! I've never worked with a producer who was more famous than everyone put together.

I had a happier experience of the city as an actress than I had had as a model.

What am I doing in this silly showbiz life? I do wonder that sometimes.

It's always a help when you have worked with someone as you've got to know them a bit already.

Location work has its charms, and can seem glamorous on the outside, but I think living at home and having the stability of a home life once you've finished work is very underrated!

I like working on stage because there's something very immediate about it, that interaction with an audience where you immediately hear their reaction, or feel them, whether they're with you.

Once you get into your stride, the camera becomes like another person in the room. It's like being in a very small theatre where there is no getting away with anything because the audience is centimetres away from you.

For a woman to say she has had a dalliance with another woman is quite trendy these days. I do not like trendiness. Life isn't about dalliances - it's about individuals. You come across people in your life that you find very interesting. It's not about something flighty.

Having spent a number of my younger years with trade-union parents attending NUT annual conferences, I feel comfortable with an agenda in my hand and a procedural format for debate.

I grew up in a strongly socialist family. While I was at school, I worked in party politics and with organizations like the Anti-Nazi League. Everywhere I saw it, I fought prejudice.

I have seen the Gore documentary 'An Inconvenient Truth,' just released in the States, and admired the acutely revolutionary delivery of the slideshow assisted talk he has now been giving for some 16 years.

I like being in love, but loving is what is crucial to me. Loving is the reason to live.

I play the guitar. This year at the Sundance film festival, I joined the band from 'The Guitar' on stage. We warmed up for Patti Smith, and then the director Michel Gondry got on the drums to play some songs from the soundtrack to his film Be Kind Rewind with Mos Def. It was pretty mad.

I was picked up on a London street by a model agent. She took me to her office and then sent me to Paris to work in shows. It was supposed to be two weeks, but I ended up living there with my Zimbabwean boyfriend. I made enough money modeling and acting in French movies to buy a nice flat.

I'll always take Scrabble and chess if I'm going filming. But I do have the Scrabble dictionary, which can be infuriating for other players.

I'm not very good with stills. I get all twitchy.

I've always been a strong feminist and felt that the image of models was detrimental to women. That whole thing really bothered me. I would think about quitting about once a week.

If I was going to make a broad generalisation, I'd say that I prefer the company of women. People know now that I live with Mike Figgis, but I prefer not to talk about it. On one level, privacy is important, but on another level I have no desire to deny certain things.

In orthodox film-making, you never shoot sequentially - but with improv, obviously every move you make has a knock-on effect; it is a cumulative process. I have improvised, on the non-scripted 'Timecode.' It can become entirely indulgent: actors smashing crockery and competing verbally.

It helps being from somewhere other than Hollywood, not having grown up with that sense of film-making. I really wasn't exposed to that as a young woman.

When I was a child I wanted to be a petrol pump attendant. I suppose you have all sorts of thoughts as a child and at the time I figured that it was a way to avoid doing anything like going on stage.

When I was little it was a great time for film-making, with stuff like Mike Nichols' 'Silkwood.' The films you see in that pre-secondary-school stage stay with you in a very particular way.

When your life is as precious as all our lives are, then it needs to be kept precious and looked after and treated well. And that is not something we should be sharing with a wider audience.

You can't ignore the system and the power you acquire as an actor if you're in films that are successful.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

I am always happy up a ladder with a paintbrush in my hand. And I wish I had more time to spend in the garden - not least because I get good ideas for writing when I'm out there.

It is evident that skepticism, while it makes no actual change in man, always makes him feel better.

I have a talent for happiness. I look with the eyes of a painter, and I see beauty.

If you just remember to breathe and smile before you act, you’ll always make the right decision.

The greatest thing that ever happened to me in my life was being allowed to do business in Macau and in China. I love it here. It has been the greatest single event in my commercial career. Period.

I wanted to be a doctor at one point and I also wanted to be a pilot. I think if you grow up in a dodgy area, reality often beats down those ambitions as you get older. But with me that never really happened.

Joe Lansdale is one of the few writers able to write in whatever genre or mode he wants on any particular day. How? He doesn't ask permission. He just steps in, out-writes everybody in the room.

Whenever we condemn, we cloak the world in pain.

Until I was about 16 years old, my dream was to be a musician. I played in rock bands and jazz bands. Then I decided to be an actor and kept the stable career of 'jazz pianist' as my safety net.

From the beginning, I wanted to live my own life, and patiently I shored up that desire against wind and tide.

The traits the word 'childish' addresses are seen so often in adults that we should abolish this age-discriminatory word when it comes to criticizing behavior associated with irresponsibility and irrational thinking.

I'm never a person who likes anything I've done. It's just the way it is. Twenty years later, I can look at something I did, and I'm still thinking, 'You know, that could have been better if you had done it this way or that way.

Until you've lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is.

Chronological age is only an approximation of your functional age.

We've just got to be careful - with all sports, let alone cricket - I think there's so much emphasis on doing the right thing all the time, but I think the public want to be entertained when they come to watch sport.

We do not owe allegiance to any candidate because they share our party or our color, but because they share our principles and our conscience.

We always thought we wanted to do a show that you could both laugh and cry in thirty minutes, and I don't know that there are that many comedies that try for that.

Sometimes it is the person closest to us who must travel the furthest distance to be our friend.

I want my home to look good, feel good, and smell good. I want it to be inclusive, to reflect the people who live there.

And I look forward to the time when I can become more indulgent with my songwriting. But this band is a family, and it's a process that we have to grow with together.

The darkest experiences in a human being's life allow that person to either go deeper and stay depressed or get the strength to stand up stronger than ever, and that's my case.