I think it's very repressive for a woman to be constantly told that she has to make films about women to better represent women, but then the reverse is not found.

I can't spend the rest of my life being pretty in a bonnet.

My alter egos have changed a lot over the years. When I was a child, I was a black horse called Storm. Whinnying and jumping over bamboo poles in the garden took up pretty much my entire childhood.

Female ambition is such a complicated thing to play because it is an aggressive quality, and people respond very badly to women exhibiting any kind of aggression.

I can only do something that my sister or my daughter, if I have one, could watch and feel positive about.

I don't really want to do things that I feel like are going to send out a message that I don't really want to sign up for.

I realise there's an innate paradox in promoting oneself on the one hand and saying, 'Oh, I don't want to be famous,' on the other.

We live in a society where children are expected to become adults overnight.

Motherhood so often comes in conflict with women's capacity to express and live their own lives.

I have always been interested in gender politics, so I'm not that keen on doing things that don't represent a truth about women.

I just don't believe you're capable of being an actor unless you have a desire to experience your emotions in a public way.

All I'm saying is that you shouldn't stay with him for the wrong reasons, even if they are noble ones. No one owes it to someone else to be their girlfriend. It's a choice you remake every day.

There have already been published by the bucketsful such brazen lies and utter fictions about me that I would long since have gone to my grave if I had allowed myself to pay attention to them.

It was a new kind of class war - the people as citizens versus the politicians and their clients in the public sector.

I have 5 teenage daughters, and I learned the hard way - it's difficult to talk to any person under the age of 25 without the presence of a cell phone.

If your neighbors did an analysis of your life, what would they learn about the kingdom?

I mean, who wants to live waking up... at least I don't want to live waking up everyday about revenge.

I just do what I do. It's not something that should be revered as something that's great.

I don't read an awful lot of fiction and when I do, it tends to be lightweight stuff.

If you are a Christian, you are not a citizen of this world trying to get to heaven; you are a citizen of heaven making your way through this world.