I have done everything I can to make sure my daughter knows her father because you form your own identity by rebelling against your parents – but first you have to know them.

The only work I did for the next five years after splitting from Vincent was work I’d already lined up.

A relationship requires a lot of work and commitment.

I have invested some money and I have a home, but people don’t realise that you might only be working for a few weeks of the year and remain unemployed the rest of the time.

Theatre is a sacred space for actors. You are responsible; you are in the driving-seat.

Having had a reputation for being sexy is a great prop to lean on now.

I want to come across as a positive person.

Two people can make love but that isn’t necessarily love.

Hollywood will accept actresses playing ten years older, but actors can play ten years younger.

I’m a heathen when it comes to marriage.

When I was bringing my daughter up alone, my bank manager came over for tea so he could tell me how worried he was about my overdraft.

I always knew it was going to be difficult when I got beyong 40, but I didn’t realise it would start at 35.

I’m more keen on the person I’m involved with showing me his commitment rather than going through a marriage to display commitment to the world.

With a theatre audience there’s always the additional sense of a sustained challenge of which I’m acutely aware and for which you need to have the tools ready – your voice, physicality, brain.

I avoided nudity unless a film couldn’t be told without those scenes. If you look at my films, few of them have that element, yet nudity and male fantasies have become emblematic of my work.

I’ve been through some very difficult stages in my life, but I wouldn’t change anything.

You seldom get that in film where you’re lucky if you get any say at all in the final cut.

I came to Ireland 20 years ago as a student, hitch-hiking round for a week and staying in Dublin.

In many ways, when you’re young and sexy, it’s very annoying to be whistled at and to have someone always trying to attract your attention, but now when it happens I find myself registering the...

I feel lucky, happy and philosophical about it all.

It helped me when I decided that we’re on this planet to learn to live together and get along.

I felt the thrill of a journey in a play where the writer gives you the power to take the audience with you, to have it eating out of your hand.

My father was absent and he was a hero to me.

I had the conviction that lovemaking fools you. The overpowering emotions it induces make you think you’re sharing the same feelings as the other person and that they’re imagining the same as you.

On the stage, you alone hold the key, and on the night you have to trust that the director has inspired you enough to take the material and run with it.

I had to turn down things that were sometimes at the expense of my career in order to find variety, in an effort not to be pigeon-holed.

Once, I had so many scripts coming to me that I could hardly read them all.