It's always more interesting to take on someone that's going to have hidden sides or a fatal flaw, because there's going to be more to play with - more conflict, internally or in and around them - but it's probably the thing of finding the positive in there.

To start, I wasn't really interested in acting at all, and I didn't make much impact. The first play I was in was on for five nights and I didn't show up for two of them and nobody noticed. But I stayed because that's where my friends were, and after a while I found myself wanting to inhabit other people's worlds and lives.

I have been in control of what I've been doing, of the career I've put together.

I suppose there are actors who are worried about their public image. But I've never had any trouble playing unpleasant characters. It is only a part. Which is why you do it -because you are interested in exploring something you never could or would be.

If you go into business school and suggest firing a customer, they'll kick you out of the building. But it's so true in my experience. It allows you to identify the customers you really want to work with.

As for my career, I always said to my kids, 'you don't cry because it's over, you're happy because it happened.'

As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug's game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.

As an actress, our hours can be grueling, and like any mother that has a career or job, it is difficult. Balancing spending time with your child in the morning and after they come home from daycare/school before is the key.