Andrea Riseborough
Tracey Emin's 'Strangeland' made me see that everything I have to be creative is inside of myself.
'Venus,' which is a Roger Michell film - my first scene was with Peter O'Toole, and I cried. That was basically my part. I came in, cried in a white wig, and then left.
I get scared of really simple things and not scared of big things.
I really enjoy picking up the physical rhythm of somebody else, speaking with their voice. I've never done in anything in my own voice, and I can't imagine what that would be like. It would be weird, I guess.
Shakespeare was the thing that started me off on that train, you know, and every one of his plays. There are so many different characters, and the wonderful thing about being in an all-girls school was I got to play them all, you know. So I got to play Mercutio and Oberon and Malvolio - it was great.
As a woman, on any film or any show, we do most of the emoting.
We worked with David Thibodeau, who wrote a book about Waco, on which the series is based. He's one of the nine survivors.
I've played a mother before, but it's always been a very young child, which is closer to what I can imagine my own life looking like.
Someone who's a great hero of mine and has become a friend is Patti Smith.
As an actor, you want to know if you're keeping a secret or telling the truth.
We all grew up aware of Agatha Christie; there is no writer more prolific than her in England.
Both of my grandfathers fought in the Second World War, and my great-grandfather died at the Somme in the First World War. I never truly believed that the War just finished and everyone was happy-clappy, brought out the bunting, and felt everything was okay again. That's definitely not my impression of the fall-out of war.
I can walk into meetings now and ask for equal pay, and the people will listen to me. They may not give it to me, but I will be listened to. That's huge.
We need to band together in solidarity. There's so many portions of our community that are under-represented. You rarely see disabled actors on movie posters or black men or Latino guys.
I'm still wearing Doc Martens. I'm sure that you can have a baby and wear Doc Martens, but... Maybe I'll be the first person to give birth in Doc Martens!
I think, sometimes, you can just get really burnt out on something you enjoy doing and feel like the sponge is completely wrung dry.
I've always been so confused about being a girl. Not in a Bruce Jenner way, just... there's that expectation where you walk into a room, and it's like, Is it OK to be a woman?' Or, you know, you're looking for your keys in the back of a cab, and sometimes the driver can treat you like you've had a lobotomy.
I play myself every day, and it's quite boring.
I grew up in the suburbs outside of Newcastle, and there were blank walls, and there was a lot of space to imagine - the fields and the motorways - so I used to sit and talk to myself as different people.
You know those bumpers in the two lanes when you go bowling? I go out there with two of them, metaphorically, every day.
Sexual inappropriacy in my industry? Absolutely. Almost every week.
I've worked opposite so many male actors whose egos have been so delicate that it was just so hard to do the work.
Politically, I thought [Margaret Thatcher] stank. I think she had a real fight on her hands to get where she got, but I don't believe that her conviction was for the greater good.Collection: Real
I've never had my own accent in a film. It's something I schedule into my preparation. That's one of my favorite things, hearing all the voices.Collection: Voice
You're miscarrying a baby first thing in the morning. Who wants to hear it? God bless them. It's a very strange life. I love the company of actors, but the crazier it gets, the more I've come to realise how valuable my time is with my friends who work on the land or are builders or, you know, make music. Work in offices. Run shops.Collection: Running
A lot of films that have been adapted from books stop serving you because they become different. I mean, they are different entities in themselves, but artistically, what you're trying to achieve with a film is so very different to what you're trying to achieve with a book, and the way when you write a script is so very different on paper to how it seems on a screen.Collection: Book
In my case, when you dive into a role, to do well and for you to do well in it, you have to put an enormous amount of faith in the director. But you also have to decide you're so interested in the material, this director, his work, and his process, that you don't care about the outcome.Collection: Directors