I'm not a pin-up, thankfully. I'm not suggesting I feel unconfident. I am beautiful to my husband. I am beautiful to my friends. I feel sexy and all those things with the people I love.

If the script's good, everything you need is in there. I just try and feel it, and do it honestly.

If I didn't have children I might be more of a lush than I am. I like booze. I struggle with smoking. And I'm a big swearer. I'm trying to rein it in but I do think it's a nice seasoning of language.

I feel fortunate that I'm not a beauty. I'm not a classic beauty. I feel it is harder for girls who are like that. There are fewer parts.

Everything with me is pretty close to the surface, but having kids has completely ruined my emotional equilibrium.

The first time I did a school play was the first time I felt I was good at anything at all. I just loved it.

I always assumed I'd be a terribly patient mum but it turns out I'm not!

I love my job and I know I am very lucky but still, if you audition and you don't get it, it still affects you.

I don't like the bullying, do-one-over style of comedy. It's so cheap.

I always assumed I would leave drama school and do 'Lady Macbeth' and all sorts of serious things. It just didn't happen.

I had a lovely, feral, free childhood - out and then come back when you're hungry or it gets too dark. I feel slightly cruel that I'm not offering my children the same.

What you shouldn't be must not be allowed to stand on the way of whom you can become.

We give up the fort when there's not a man left to defend it.

Myself, Marion Jones and Michael Johnson all got married on the same day because it was the only point on the athletics' schedule we could fit in. October 3, 1998.

Television excites me because it seems to be the last stamping ground of poetry, the last place where I hear women's hair rhapsodically described, women's faces acclaimed in odelike language.

People who don't like cats haven't been around them. There's the old joke: dogs have masters, cats have staff.

I have somewhere read that conscience not only sits as witness and judge within our bosoms, but also forms the prison of punishment.

If human civilization is going to invade the waters of the earth, then let it be first of all to carry a message of respect.

I can't try to throw 110 miles per hour. I've got to pitch under control.

But still at that particular level of commercialism I listen to those projects I still hear some stagnation in a lot of the stuff.

Wine is inspiring and adds greatly to the joy of living.