“Mum and dad were very much friends, and up to life. There was no anxiety for anything when I was growing up, they just taught me to be me.”

I was the kid who never won the races. I never jumped the highest. I wasn’t on the list of the high-achieving.

I accept my body. I accept how I am and make the best of what I am given.

I’m often moved by the circumstances around some of my characters, but I don’t think I’ve actually cried watching myself.

There are moments to indulge and enjoy, but I always know when it’s time to go home and wash my knickers.

Of course I believe in marriage. Commitment to one other person in life is glorious.

Regret isn’t good. Every decision one makes in life is made for a reason or another. Whenever something bad happens, I go, ‘This is happening for a reason’, or, ‘This is going to teach me something’.

I feel very strongly that curves are natural, womanly and real. I shall continue to hope that women are able to believe in themselves for who they are inside, and not feel under such incredible pressure to be unnaturally thin.

If you don’t try at anything, you can’t fail.

I wanted to play incredibly challenging, multifaceted characters. Because we are all a puzzle.

I have just wanted to be an actress. That’s always been my goal. I didn’t want to be famous.

I struggle for what I believe in. Life is short, it’s impossible to repeat something; you have to take advantage of things when you can reach them.

It doesn’t matter how old you are, or what you do in your life, you never stop needing your mom.

If you’re not still learning and growing as an actor, then you have no backbone and no career.

She has a choice. She can either accept a life of misery or she can struggle against it. And she chooses to struggle…she fails in the end but there’s something beautiful and even heroic in her rebellion.

I have no regrets. If you regret things, you’re sort of stepping backwards. I’m a believer in going forwards.

Acting is about being real, being honest.

The emotions in all true anxiety dreams are next to unbearable.

Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.

People are less self-conscious in the intimacy of family life and during the anxiety of a great sorrow. The dazzling varnish of an extreme politeness is then less in evidence, and the true qualities of the heart regain their proper proportions.

Every writer knows that unless you were born gifted with either supreme confidence or outsize ego, handing in your work holds, in some cases, admitted terror. If that’s too strong, at least fairly high anxiety.

Loving yourself is holding your own hand while you shake with anxiety.

I wake up every morning with the worst anxiety. I don’t know why. I have, like, a problem.

There is great beauty in going through life without anxiety or fear. Half our fears are baseless, and the other half discreditable.

Sicknesses, losses, crosses, anxieties and disappointments seem absolutely needful to keep us humble, watchful and spiritual-minde d. They are as needful as the pruning knife to the vine and the refiner’s furnace to the gold.