Interview With the Vampire.

In the morning, I never cleanse. I just splash my face with water and pat it dry. I honestly think that the human body is a clever thing and that the natural oils my skin produces are best for it. Then I apply a dab of rouge, and I'm off.

When I first started, as long as you were a bit brown, you could play any kind of ethnic anything. Now it's much more localised and specific. I feel like a wise old woman looking back on the evolution of how much more sophisticated audiences are.

We each have a self, but I don't think that we're born with one. You know how newborn babies believe they're part of everything; they're not separate? Well that fundamental sense of oneness is lost on us very quickly. It's like that initial stage is over - oneness: infancy, unformed, primitive. It's no longer valid or real.

I love being in my forties. Just getting there and realising that you haven't grown horns or boils on your bum, when all the time it had been this thing looming in the future, is such a relief.

You see these casting directors' lists of characters, and they're all boxed in. Twenties is the hot girlfriend, thirties you can still be hot but moving swiftly to hot mum. Forties, you're the legal person in a pantsuit. Then, once you reach your fifties, you're positively elderly.