Caroline Quentin

“When I'm home I'm just happier, more at peace and more settled. It's fine being away, but it's not really living.”

“I'm interested in how we can change the nature of what's appealing in women so that all this nonsense about how we look, this obsession with Botox, dieting and cosmetic surgery, will just go away.”

“I have a very strict delineation between who I am and what it is. I very much do this for a living and it's not my life. I think a lot of people in my industry define themselves by their work and it breaks my heart.”

“I know it sounds cheesy, but I do feel so blessed. I have a great job, I have the best children in the world and I have a darling husband who loves me.”

“I don't think I had any idea how much I would love becoming a mother. Although I'm away a lot, my children, Emily and William, are secure. Sam, their father, stays at home with them and I'm at home as much as I can be.”

“We live on a farm and we've never been happier, living in the country and pootling about. We keep chickens, turkeys and pigs, and I grow veg - it's perfect.”

“When I was younger, I had such awful, poisonous things written about me: male critics likening me to unattractive animals, and suggesting I should be in a zoo.”

“I'm very intolerant of people in my industry who don't understand that a quality script is the most important thing. It makes me incandescent.”

“I have never gone for a diagnosis and I don't consider myself to be bipolar, but I have extreme moods. I get heightened. I get very overexcited. But I do get very low, too... I don't know whether it's inherited or learned.”

“Getting older has compensations, though when you hit 50 you become very aware of your own mortality and it makes you reassess.”

“I'm not mad keen on comedy that points the finger at people and ridicules them. I don't find that very funny. I like the stuff where you feel better afterwards.”

“As an actor, you tend to have to be a bit of a people-pleaser, and I think that I just don't really care about that so much any more.”

“I started out as a dancer and an actor, and I need to remind myself that I can still do theatre.”

“I like to look nice when I go out and I'll put on a bit of slap, but I'm not someone who spends hours looking at myself. I live on a farm in Devon and when I look in the mirror I can see my garden behind me. That's what I'm really interested in.”

“If I'm outside, I'm really happy. I don't care whether it's blowing a gale, I just love being outdoors.”

“I see a fitness coach three times a week and I do a lot of boxing, a bit of running when my knees let me, circuit training, fit ball, anything that will keep my heart going and stop me getting even fatter.”

“My husband's a very good baker. He does all the baking at home - if there is any - because I'm a coeliac. I tend to avoid stuff like that, I don't even buy it.”

“I hear radio plays that I did 20 years ago and I can't bear it; I see things on telly that I made six months ago and I just hate them. I could name on one hand the things that I think are OK; the rest of it is just rubbish and embarrassing.”

“I think that, as you get older, you become less focused on yourself and more focused on the people in your life.”

“Mum was a brilliant classical pianist. She was Canadian and studied music at McGill University. She took me to ballet when I was a little girl, and those are some of my happiest memories.”