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My parents were very volatile but very loving. My father would get jealous if my mother looked at somebody. I used to be insanely jealous. It comes out of insecurity. It can come and go, but you get to the point in life where you don't have this raging jealousy and protectiveness about your world.
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The gym is where I get my chill-out time. I try to go six days a week, but when I'm working, that goes down to about three.
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The girl-next-door image is a sort of joke; for years, I couldn't get any roles other than as somebody dark.
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It was in India that I started my acting career, courtesy of my parents, long before I set foot on stage in England. They headed a company of travelling players performing Shakespeare up and down the land.
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As we have more women in power, so the plays and the TV dramas are reflecting what's happening.
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The problem men seem to have, and women, too, is that they have this very structured idea that we should find a partner and settle down and be, you know, faithful. And yet clearly this is really, really hard for anybody to do!
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I did try fillers once. Don't ever have fillers because when your cheekbones are high, it's chipmunk time.
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So many roles for women demand that you make the audience fall in love with you or sympathise with you.
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I love gentle, gorgeous classical music such as Mozart.
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Success breeds success, and failure leads to a sort of fallow period.
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Every time we moved on, I joined a different class in a different school with different girls until, aged 13, my father had taken the decision to pull me out of school altogether. Everything I needed, he reasoned, could be found within the rich language of Shakespeare's plays at which, by then, I was something of an old hand.
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I don't think, until you've actually lost somebody you really love, that you can go through that door that allows you to be grown-up.
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I have to say I am a 'Strictly' fan, which is why I am in it. I've always watched it for years. I am not an 'X Factor' fan, and I just think it is a different show. One is about learning something new and having a great time, and the other is rather desperate.
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I love a mask. It's why I've got a thing about good writing. When you're acting, you're going into someone else's work. You're behind his words; it's not you.
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We take ourselves so seriously moment by moment, but India shows you a sense of eternity. You're one little ant on a hill. You're part of life, but you're not the whole thing.
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I'm lucky in that I don't like sweet things at all. My father loved cakes to such a degree that he kept forcing them down my throat when I was little, and it put me off for life. He had terrible cholesterol, poor thing.
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Every woman feels she is too old and has missed the boat.
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I think very few people do find a relationship where, every moment of every day, everything they do comes together. That's why, in a nutshell, everyone loved Barbara in 'The Good Life.' She was the perfect partner. It was a formula. She wasn't glamorous. She wasn't clever. But she was a good partner. That's too easy, too perfect.
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I am used to looking good. In a way, if I thought I looked like the back end of a bus, I probably wouldn't have done 'Strictly Come Dancing' and gone out there in public.
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In a play, the director is God, and I'm a great arguer. Rather boringly so, I think, about trying different things.
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When I was much younger, I sometimes felt rejected by feminists because of an image that I sold because it paid the bills. Any fool could tell my hair is dyed.
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I don't treasure things much - just people. And pets.
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Looking back, I got the bed I wanted and I lay in it. I didn't want to go to America. If you want to join that world, you have to go and live there, and that was something I could not have done. I am very much about family. It doesn't matter where I live, but I feel very needful of my people around me. Besides, theatre is my first love.
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It's difficult to say what attracts one person to another. It's always a combination, isn't it? I've always found people interesting because of the way they think, and a sense of humour is irresistible.