My kids will never need a bodyguard because they'll have me.

Yoga is great for easing my back pain. It also helps me keep stress at bay, which is something I can suffer from.

It does annoy me when I walk into a room and there are six men over the age of 40 with, let's just say, a major gut problem, and they're saying 'hang on there Dervla, don't eat your chocolate cake at dessert.'

I'm only 5ft 2in so a significant increase in weight is really going to be noticed.

Who hasn't had an argument with their mother-in-law?

I've made a lot of mistakes in my career but the biggest mistake I've made is to turn down work.

I am all for high art but I owe it to myself to be clever about it and do commercial things too.

Ballykissangel' made me a household name, and I am enormously grateful for that, but I don't feel it would ever have developed me into a better actress had I stayed.

A lot of actresses say they are 24 when they are 34 but I find that ridiculous. I wish we didn't succumb to the youth-is-all ideology in this industry, because there is a huge audience out there who want to relate to characters of their own age played by actors of their own age.

I'd never scan the starters and main courses on a menu in a restaurant as a child. I'd want a dessert for starter, for main course and for dessert.

I was a waitress at a really rundown Italian restaurant in Dublin, for about a week, at 16. I thought it was going to be romantic - overhearing affairs and watching first-time couples all loved up. But instead I was just running about constantly.

I ate ostrich. I'm not very proud of it. I was going through a very experimental period and probably during foot and mouth. It was exquisite, but I felt very guilty.

My mother was a woman of the '50s who had a family in the '70s while finding her political and feminist voice. She could make marvellous three-course meals after teaching all day but hated it. Because of that legacy, it took me a long time to realise the delights of the family table.

The main thing I've done for my children is not to give them a stupid name, like actors do.

I really want to work with Mike Leigh.

I want to interact creatively with the directors I work with - it's a thrilling way to work.

The actor's job is to put themselves in the shoes of the character they are trying to portray as truthfully as possible.

I've been very lucky with having a run of working with very special people and it just makes you work harder.

It's a collective experience when you're making TV. You think of all the people who work hard to make this extraordinary and you just hope that it works well.

I was always quite mature as a child and as I get older I'm regressing.

I never read the good press and never read the bad press. If you believe the good press you're finished. If you believe the bad press, you won't be able to continue.

My parents have a brilliant ear for languages and mimicry and accents, which I think I've inherited - that I can listen to things and pick them up.

I never discuss my troubles in a relationship. It's best to just keep those thoughts to yourself.

Because I don't live there anymore, I've fallen in love with London again.

As long as you're chasing something, that keeps you alive, right?

I watched 'Lagerfeld Confidential,' which was such an insight into the daily life of a maverick designer.

Now it comes to this stage of my career when I get to play the wicked witch all the time. You know you start off with Cinderella and then you end up playing the stepmothers.

My favourite designers are Stella McCartney, Balenciaga, Karl Lagerfeld, Chanel and Givenchy, but I wish I had loads of money to spend on them.

I didn't grow up reading magazines; I was very much in an environment where that would have been deemed trivial, frivolous.

Growing up, I wanted blond hair.

When I look at a magazine and I see Kate Winslet, I will buy it because Kate lends it a sense of achievement: she is brilliant, sexy, a mother.

I am very scatty, I don't follow things through, I forget things. I am not perfect.

I don't have a great relationship with food.

I was pregnant with my first child and so gloriously happy. I felt fecund and powerful.

Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) runs in my family, as do other mental health problems.

I am concerned that there's a cavalier attitude to the Irish Peace Process. What poor memories some have; I remember only too well the bag searches, the bomb scares and deaths. As they say, history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.

I don't want to be known as 'oh, Dervla, when she's on stage she's very good but she's terribly dreary', or 'another heavy night with Kirwan.'

I'm obviously slightly ill, because there is a burning desire to be perfect in me. It's probably the Catholic, or the ex-Catholic in me.

I've no desire to be away from my family for 16 hours a day.

Since I was 15 I've lived in fear that I'd never work again.

I'd much rather go for a long walk than spend an hour in the gym.

I take the kids horse riding every weekend at Quob Stables - the people there are lovely.

David Attenborough's 'Life' series is phenomenal. He's a wonderful modern soothsayer.

I'm a terrible cook but I wish I wasn't.

Yeah, I talk to everyone. I think that's the secret, you know. Keep it friendly, keep it warm. People just want to connect, don't they, at the end of the day?

I just love being in the middle of nowhere.

There's a difference between loneliness and solitude. You pursue solitude, I think. But loneliness is a completely different isolating thing.

There's still, dare I say it, a cultural propaganda against the Irish, that we are, as women, 'feisty.' I hate that word.

True Dare Kiss' is a gothic drama about a highly dysfunctional Mancunian family who, after 20 years, reconvene for the funeral of their father. I wanted to play Phil because I really liked the character, and there is an element of mystery about her - which I can't reveal.

I'm not a football fan, and not remotely interested in it.