Nicola Walker

It was really unusual that the crews on 'Spooks' were a real mix of men and women, and you'd struggle to see many women with parts that weren't cliched back in the late '90s.

When I look back at the Nineties, I realise there wasn't very much TV I wanted to do.

It's totally different playing a lawyer and a detective.

I noticed that, on 'Spooks,' there were a lot of women behind the camera and in different departments.

In this industry, people like to look at different faces on their screens - even I do.

Before I had my son, I became obsessed by this painting I'd seen in an art gallery. It was a lot of money, but I felt such a rush of adrenaline when I wrote the cheque to buy it. I thought I was going to gaze lovingly at it forever, but after just two weeks, I realised I didn't really like it any more.

When you're a kid, you imagine acting to be singing and fighting and like the movies. Then you become an actor and get the reality, which is often a lot more mundane. But sometimes it's really nice to run around with guns saving the world.

When you're working, you're in the present, but you've always got one eye on where your next job might be coming from, and I don't think that will ever go away.

I've always had a resting expression that either makes me look deep in thought or as though I'm about to fight you. I've lost count of the number of directors asking me what the problem is when all I'm doing is sitting still and being.

It can be tough to turn things down, but as an actor, being in demand is a nice problem to have.

My husband is an actor, and we don't talk about acting at home.

We're all used to seeing a lot of cop shows, some of them brilliant, some of them very generic.