“I have been enormously lucky. My first role was in a great film by a woman director.”

That, for me, actually is the most important thing about doing a period film is trying to make these people as lovable as they are back then.

As beautiful as cinema is, it’s a massive part of the problem of why we look at ourselves in the way we do.

I think there’s always some good reason to try and modernize most period things, because at the end of the day, they may have,

If you look at it, the corset is a very beautiful item, but when I put one on, I realized how little you could actually move.

During the Me Too breakthrough, I was hanging out with Emma Thompson and Emily Watson – two people I’ve looked up to my entire life. Talking to those women was so empowering.

The Falling’ was a big, flashy, bizarre experience. I kept on saying at the time it was a fluke because I did the audition, and I didn’t think anything would come of it.

I think it’s good to not edit your life too much, or you give people different standards.

I remember being about six years old, for the first day of school, and sitting in the back of a Chrysler, pretending to cry while listening to Tracy Chapman.

I like a face that hasn’t been tampered with.

What’s important is to listen before you react.

The whole wrestling art, it’s a whole form, is performance, and that’s what makes it so exciting to do.

What audiences love with series is that they can invest in characters for such a long period of time, and it’s the same for actors. You can truly tell your story; then it’s done.

For me, it’s always been so obvious that the less we can edit our lives and more we show how normal we all are, the better.

I have learned how to wrestle. You end up battered and blue – but so happy.

I wrestled at the Staples Centre at ‘Monday Night Raw’ when I was 21 years old.

What I’ve noticed about Hollywood is, if you go out there shouting about who you are, they will love you for it. But if you go out not knowing what it is that you’re representing, and you are just a canvas, they will make you into the thing they need you to be.

The only way that Hollywood ever skews toward liberal is because part of what we make out of Hollywood involves writers, actors, directors, musicians, set designers, and photographers.

I like great directors who are scarce. Prolific ones are nice too but for me, there’s something about the scarcity that makes it all the more valuable.

When an actor plays a scene exactly the way a director orders, it isn’t acting. It’s following instructions.

Anyone with the physical qualifications can do that. So the director’s task is just that – to direct, to point the way. Then the actor takes over.

My advice to female directors is not to wait until you feel like your ideas have been pre-certified or until you think you’ve gotten some approval for them.

The poetic way of looking at it is which project is going to choose me as a director.

I don’t come to work as an actor. There are many directors who can direct without ever having acted and do a great job and connect with their actors and lead them to excellent performances without themselves having had an acting background.

In my experience as a director, I think there is obviously something of the way men – maybe that’s a common point with Shirin – the way men see women in the film, and the way these two characters see each other.