"I remember being about eight and watching 'Pollyanna' with Hayley Mills. I looked at my mum and said, 'Mum, I want to be Pollyanna.' She said, 'You're going to have to make yourself cry if you want to be an actress.' So I turned my head away, and when I turned it back I was in floods of tears."

"I've been very lucky and been able to work, as an actress, but I'm definitely a working actress. I get a script, I audition, and then I pray."

"I think it's important not to grow up too fast. I'm 26 now, and I still can't wait for Christmas Day. The inner seven-year-old isn't buried too deeply in me."

"I see my daft surname as a positive thing. It first dawned on me that I had a comical name when someone called me 'Fishface' on my first day at school. I've heard all the fish jokes since then, many times over."

"I can't talk about foreign policy like anyone who's spent their life reading and learning foreign policy. But as a citizen in a democracy, it's very important that I participate in that."

"Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest."

"It is a profound truth that he who reads widely and ponders deeply builds an unshakeable inner citadel — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"Wisdom principle 56 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 75."