It's wrong - everyone's concentrating on the wrong thing. There's 130 million people in crisis in this world at the moment, in humanitarian crisis, and most of them are women, more than half of them are women. So can we all stop slinging mud at each other about definition?
I don't think you can be a diver without a shark on the list.
You don't want the white men to be written in a three-dimensional way but the black men, not. I mean, it's just about [how] scripts should always reflect real human beings. So that's what I look for.
I think the beauty of the writing of 'Game of Thrones' is not that the characters are fearless; it's how they overcome their fear, you know?
Famously, Anne Boleyn was not a beauty: she was more about quirkiness and an innate sensuality, and there are a lot of references to her eyes. Which sends out a great message for women, because life is not about the aesthetic all the time.
Cersei took so many of us out in the last episode and she's really turned dark; even Jaime Lannister can see that, so I don't think that Cersei Lannister is long for her Westeros world. I hope she's not.
A character on a page has to feel real, and for me the greatest fun is if you could gender-swap the role.
Problems reconciling mom and the wife are difficult in the best of times.
I have Margaery Tyrell's - I didn't take it, I was given it - but yes, David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss] gave me Margaery Tyrell's wedding crown. So that is sitting on my bookshelf.
We're getting caught up with labels: "Nudity: bad." It's not about "nudity: bad." It's about gratuitous oversexualization of children; it's complicated.
I think that's the most dangerous kind of sexism: People don't realize it's there and we end up surreptitiously accepting it because it's just part of our culture. I've never experienced explicit, overt, confrontational sexism personally.
I just think that if we stopped playing on the superficial level and concentrated on women in real crises throughout the world, it would be a better thing if we all stood together about the important stuff and stopped getting distracted by superficial things.
I have been to Canada several times. It was autumn when I visited Vancouver and I will always remember the colour of the trees in British Columbia were stunning.
I go to yoga classes as well as practicing myself. I'm always open to new experiences and when I'm in different cities shooting, I try some local classes sometimes.
As an actor, your text is your bible, so you're not making a documentary, but you still have to follow the choices made by your writer.
Some of the most successful, talented actresses of our generation, be it Julianne Moore, or Charlize Theron, or Charlotte Gainsbourg, or Isabella Rossellini, if you know your cinema history, have taken their clothes off. There's nothing wrong with nudity, per se, if it's part of the storytelling and it's eloquent and it says something about the raw humanity of the story.
I'm a quasi-only child. With my brother and sister, I've more of a tendency to be semi-maternal. So, yes, I spent a lot of time talking to myself - I had this big dressing-up box and would just dress up as lots of characters and talk back to myself... Verging on schizophrenia, I suppose, if you analyse it carefully.
I was a very physical child... I was a tree-climber; I was a tomboy.
It's a writer's or director's role to be cerebral, whereas for an actor it should be a visceral, gut thing. When the action starts, it's best to turn the brain off and let it become an instinctual thing.
There are a lot of parallels between the historical Henry VIII and Jonathan Rhys Meyers. There's an oscillation and extremity of emotion throughout his repertoire that lends itself beautifully to the nature of Henry VIII, definitely. He will push things to the limit, and yet remain in emotional control.
We don't have enough young, female antiheroes. We don't accept women as antiheroes the way we do the men.
Three-dimensional, complex women get an audience engaged as much as the men. I’m a feminist in the true sense of the word. It’s about equality.
I’ve spent a lot of recreational time walking around historical castles and estates, in Britain and Europe, and so I know what the real thing looks like
Ive got a soft spot for really cheesy 1980s ballads by Pat Benatar and Foreigner. When I'm having my make-up put on at 6am and I need to be warmed up gently, it's always Ella Fitzgerald or Nina Simone.
I was frequently told at drama school that I was thinking too much.
