And the most important thing – apart from telling a good, believable story, and being a true character – is to be someone the audience will care about, even if you’re playing a murderer or rapist.
The doctors say it dates back to a film where I had these huge prosthetic breasts because my character was breast-feeding. The weight of them, and of the baby, did my back in.
You can see when an actor gets bored: Their eyes go dead. I promised myself I’d never let that happen. If it does, I’ll go and live on a desert island for a year.
Well ironically my last three roles have all been a mother. One was a Canadian film where the baby was taken away because she is a drug addict, in Irish Jam I play a mother to a four year old. I think in the future I’ll be able to handle the role with a lot more depth.
I’ve never been onstage in my life.
Now learning a bit more about footballers I think what they need to do well, is someone who really wants to stay in the background and just be a strong support.
Eternity to a child offers goodness, and eternal life to a man is essentially corrupting because it involves a certain amount of vanity to embrace it.
Onstage, there’s no hiding; you either can or can’t act. There’s no second take.
I’ve always chosen incredibly different roles and things that are quite offbeat. That way you’re not limited.
I want more children but for the next three years I want to act.
I look at being an actress as being like a mummy: You’re bandaged up and preserved as soon as you start making other people money.
I have the most lovely, healthy bouncing baby, she was all very compact and the right size.
People became more interested in my love life than in me, and that has a certain effect. You start to feel very empty and worth nothing, you start to become a piece in a board game you never wanted to play.
If oil exploration can threaten a place as beautiful and meaningful as Virunga, where next?
I’ve been on sets where the turnaround is so fast and the budget so small that the actors have been asked to speed things up and save money by changing in the public toilets. There’s no room for vanity at times like that. It’s the best way: get on with it!
But Americans find me bizarre and always ask me why I eat so many carbs. I tell them I don’t get full otherwise.
Eating at home is important for us, because we eat out so much when we’re away. When I’m at home I cook a lot and we eat pretty healthily. I’m not a massive vegetable fan – I’ve got better since I discovered how to undercook them.
There were reports of me using fat-sucking machines and all sorts of silliness. All I did was walk a lot and breast-feed. I’ve never been on a strict diet. I just don’t overeat, and I don’t eat if I’m not hungry.
I was just disciplined. I knew I had to get back into shape after six weeks for the film Goal II, but I cheated in the end – I wore a corset. I loved my pregnancy, I blossomed. I felt goddess-like and very secure. I found it comforting to have a little thing growing inside me, and very calming.
My whole family is quite petite, so I have good genes on my side. But I find it quite tiresome that we have to keep talking about sizes and how much weight we can lose.
When I was younger I thought I’d meet the man of my dreams, get married and have a child, but it all went higgledy-piggledy. Never say never, though...