Good looks are not something you earn. But as you get older, how you look is a reflection of the life you've led.

I have a cottage near Aldeburgh, and from there its a sturdy two-mile walk across farmland to an empty beach, where I collect hag stones and run around with the dog. Im a keen walker, and I love Suffolks big skies.

I'm an actress, not a celebrity.

Its always been fun for me to play a variety of parts, and over the years, Ive been lucky with the things Ive been asked to do.

If you try to live as well as you can, then hopefully your face will reflect that. But it's unfair that we put so much pressure on women to look good and then give them so much stick when they go under the knife to achieve this.

I moved to Kentish Town from Chelsea in 1983, partly because I had a lot of friends already living in the area and because it took an hour off the journey to my house in Suffolk. It has a villagey feel, and it's still a very mixed community, which I like.

As a young actor, I played a lot of 'exotic' parts and was stuck with the tag 'sultry.' I had to refuse such parts if I were ever to play anything else. It did the trick, but my agent feared it made me harder to cast.

When I was growing up and trying to get my foot on the ladder, I had the self-belief that my mother taught me, and it never occurred to me that anything could go wrong. I've learned life can't be like that.

The sheeplike nature of travel - being on a beach with thousands of other people is not my idea of fun. I also don't like being a tourist because you don't know what's really going on in a country.

My parents liked to go dancing, and they encouraged all of us to bring our friends home. My brother had a skiffle group, and there would often be dancing in the house. And my parents would come and dance with us.