How lucky am I?

I didn’t know box office was a thing you could possess but I don’t have it. I go up for lovely roles and people with this nebulous thing called box office get them so there isn’t much I can do about that unless you know where I can get some box-office myself!

When the Hollywood thing happened, I thought at some point I’d get to the front of the queue: ‘Yes, hello, I’d like to play that role.’ But you don’t. You just join a different queue.

I wanted to play a TV detective because it’s a rite of passage; I wanted to experience every area of acting. I haven’t done comedy or as much Shakespeare as I had intended.

There’s this absurd situation on a movie set where your trailer’s here and the set is here and the lunch tent is here, and you’re not allowed to get yourself from these three places.

I’m a mixture of Anglo-Saxon, a bit of Spanish and one-eighth American. I’ve often wondered if I have an Asiatic ancestor from the East as well because I have deep-set eyes. Make-up artists are constantly trying to shade my eyelids, and I have to point out that I don’t have any!

My parents have always been cool. They even became surrogates to friends of mine who didn’t have such supportive parents.

From a very young age, I wanted to get up on stage whenever I went to the theatre – the actors just seemed to be having so much fun. One of my worries about theatre, in fact, is that the actors are quite often having more fun than the audience.

I’ve been lucky enough to kiss three James Bonds on screen: Pierce Brosnan, George Lazenby and Daniel Craig.

My husband Rhashan reminds me of my father because he’s got great strength of character.