Women's lives get more interesting the older they get. For some reason, when you hit 35, it turns into a grey area filmically. There's not much more until you start playing grannies. I'm not ready for that. I'm just naffed off that, between 35 and 50, there aren't better things about.

My father worked for the Foreign Office, so he was away a lot of the time. We were a very volatile family. There was a lot of love and a lot of conflict. The conflict kicked in mostly during my adolescence.

Soaps are one of the few areas on TV that really embrace older women. In drama, there's this ridiculous invisibility for women between the ages of 40 and 60. Unless you're old enough to play a grandmother, there just aren't the roles.

If you build a career on being a beautiful young woman, that's going to be a short career. I have to establish I can act. I don't want to have to visit the plastic surgeon every two years.