I never really think about my gender, first and foremost - until a door is closed to you. Until you can see a parallel opportunity with a man in a similar place in his career and you think, That opportunity is not open to me or my fellow actresses. That's interesting.

My husband wasn't put off by it - he thought it was hilarious to see me dressed as Dylan! He didn't particularly want to kiss me with stubble all over my face - it felt a bit odd! But I think he's used to it [the make-up process].

Lazy thinking is not creative or productive.

Fashion is one thing, you kind of can change your silhouette and try this and try that. But I think that with skin care, you know anything that you put into your skin goes into your body, so you want to know it's actually good for you. So I think I don't believe in fashion when it comes to skin care if that makes sense.

I look at someone's face and I see the work before I see the person. I personally don't think people look better when they do it; they just look different.

Women have been doing very, very strange things for centuries. I mean ancient Egyptians were already doing that, but I don't necessarily judge people who do. I don't really think it makes people look better; they just look different.

One of my favorite moments is onstage, when you see a dancer leap, and you think they're flying, and then they fall. It's that moment of suspension that you look for, and sometimes you get it and sometimes you don't.

Sometimes I think it's so good not to win those things. And, anyway, who wants to peak when they're 28?

There's plenty of girlfriend roles out there. They've come my way, and many people have turned them down, and I think, "Oh maybe I could do something with this." It's interesting when you get those roles, which seem like nothing on the page, and you kind of subvert them. It's hard to say no.

I think the downside of the Internet is that speaking-or writing-has become the point in and of itself.

I certainly think that when I flick through all the magazines at the hairdresser's I like to see and am drawn to images that have an intelligence and mind at work behind them.

I think often women can feel isolated and feel like they get into a rut and don't quite know how to get out of it.

I think marriage is all about timing. Getting married is insanity; I mean, it's a risk - who knows if you're going to be together forever? But you both say, 'We're going to take this chance, in the same spirit.

I think at the prospect of bringing children into the world, your mortality comes very much to the forefront, absolutely.

I think good theaters are really important. They allow you to exist in a space with other people.

I love theatre - it's where I started - and I've directed a play myself. I'm not sure if I want to direct a film, but certainly, as an actress, I'm always thinking, 'Surely this must be my last film.'

I think when something is apolitical and it gets politicised, then it's incredibly disappointing.

I think we should all feel lucky and blessed that people are still, in this day and age, getting in their cars with other people and driving to a location and paying money to sit in a theater and watch a play.

I love those moments on stage, on screen and in life when you dispense with language, when you sort of transcend it in a way, and certainly the experience of falling in love, I think, defies words, which is why poets, painters, musicians, actors have tried to describe that feeling, writers have just tried to put words to that.

The less one can think about oneself, the more interesting and attractive one becomes.

I think you need to have a healthy sense of doubt because I think doubt leads to inquiry.

If you think about Audrey Hepburn, I think she became more beautiful when she stopped being an actress and started working with humanitarian campaigns. The more engaged you can become the more you can shed your self-consciousness.

I think referendums are fantastic as long as the question is phrased in a way which is not meant to deliberately confuse or confound people.

People who say, 'There's nothing to fear from spiders' have clearly never been to Australia.

I live my life parallel with my work, and they are both equally important. I'm always amazed how much people talk about celebrity and fame. I don't understand the attraction.

When you go to a concert, part of being there is that you're all hearing the same thing. It's about being in a crowd. If you go to a gig and there are two people there, then it's not the same thing.

People assume actors are born liars, but I'd argue the actor's job is to tell the truth. And I've realised I'm not a good liar.

People love events - they love performances, they love music - and I think Australians are great entertainers.

When you're onstage, you're acutely aware of the reaction of a particular group of people, because it's like a wave.

A lot of people are frightened by old age - by being around people who are, basically, on their way out - but I'm fascinated by it. It's an amazing thing to be around someone who has had a life well lived.

People had always vaguely mentioned that when you have children, how part of your life would stop. But they don't say that some other extraordinary part of your life opens up.

People tend to look great if they feel great.

Fine-tuning a play like 'Uncle Vanya,' which is already well-known to the people playing it, is not so much a verbal exercise as it is a visceral one.

That's why so many people want to play Hamlet: because it's a completely demarked role, and the actor playing it has to be prepared, through the language, to allow the audience to see into who he is.

You're always more critical of your own country. People will talk about stuff in Britain, and I'll go: 'Aw, it's not that bad,' but at home, it's different. It's inside you.

In my career, I thought I've never wanted to get anywhere in particular. I just wanted to work with interesting people on interesting projects.

I'm not interested in saying what people should and shouldn't do. It depends on how people feel about themselves. I suppose personally if you do anything out of fear or to mask who you are, then that's a bit scary. You've got to work with what you got....

With a role like Hedda Gabler, which is incredibly complicated, you often feel that you haven't even scratched the surface the first time around, so you relish the opportunity to do it again, particularly with an ensemble of actors and the company we assembled. But when you do that in films you somehow have to make some attempt to uncross people's arms and you have to justify why you're doing it.

I think the terrifying thing is you see all these people who go to the same cosmetic surgeon, and they end up, after a while, looking like everyone.

We're growing up with a very illiterate bunch of children who have somehow been taught that film is fact when, in fact, it's invention. Hopefully, an historical film will inspire people to go and read about the history but in the end it is a work of fiction and selection. As for the armour itself, no it wasn't particularly comfortable.

The emoji still doesn't really speak to the complexity that actually - or the subtext that goes on between when people actually speak face-to-face.

We change people's lives, at the risk of our own. We change countries, governments, history, gravity. After gravity, culture is the thing that holds humanity in place, in an otherwise constantly shifting and, let's face it, tiny outcrop in the middle of an infinity of nowhere

You can't be trying to make a film that pleases all people, you know, so it's not a concern of mine.

I often have a few scents depending on if I'm playing a character. The character may be wearing a scent that perhaps I wouldn't wear. We've all got different moods and ways we want to express ourselves; scent is a very powerful way to let people in to your secret life.

Audiences want to see them, and in fact, they earn money. The world is round, people.

A film is not a documentary. And what's wonderful about film is that it's a real provocation for people. I never, ever see film as being an absolute version of the truth.

It seems like people increasingly just can't be by themselves because they're so used to having an epicenter on the Internet that actually exists for other people. Until someone clicks onto your Facebook page, it doesn't mean anything.

I'm old enough to remember the days when you spoke to one person from one outlet and that was the conversation. But now what happens is you speak to people and what you say gets translated into Portuguese, then into Mandarin, through a German prism and then back into English and bears little to no resemblance between - to the exchange or - that you had initially with the journalist or to what you originally said.

People talk about the golden age of Hollywood because of how women were lit then. You could be Joan Crawford and Bette Davis and work well into your 50s, because you were lit and made into a goddess. Now, with everything being sort of gritty, women have this sense of their use-by date.

I think referendums are fantastic as long as the question is phrased in a way which is not meant to deliberately confuse or confound people.