Julia Sawalha

“I do believe in an afterlife. I try to be at one with people and try to love life as much as I can.”

“I'm terrible at solving things. I'm really bad and haven't got any sort of lateral thinking capacity. I am your perfect audience for a mystery. I love that kind of stuff. I'm always on the edge of my seat.”

“It's not so much that I'd like to play a raunchy character, but I would like to play someone my own age. I'm always playing down, but I guess it's good because it means I've got a longer life in my acting career.”

“When you come out of your teens, you think you're sussed. But you don't know who you are at 22. You're constantly trying to fit in. You get a little lost.”

“I don't get inoculations or take anti-malaria tablets when I go abroad; I take the homeopathic alternative, called 'nosodes', and I'm the only one who never goes down with anything.”

“What keeps me awake at night? Just about everything! I worry that I am not there for my family enough. So what keeps me awake at night is general guilt!”

“I love finding things. I love digging around in the dirt. It's part of my Virgo. It's like acting, really. You're always searching around for something and finding little hidden treasures.”

“I've got a string of disastrous relationships behind me. I don't think I'm an easy person to live with.”

“I'm single, and I think that by the time I met someone - if I were ever to meet the right person, which I don't think I will, because I am too fussy - my biological clock means that it will be too late.”

“There is nothing more special than a love of a child, and I love the fact I am an auntie.”

“It's very hard to dramatise something factual and not make it look overdone, but also not to make it look so under-dramatised that it's dull.”

“I love a bit of glamour - who doesn't? - but I probably wouldn't be able to pull it off.”

“I think it's healthy to be insecure, to have nerves.”

“I want to be in 'The Hobbit.' I love fantasy and mythical adventure films. I believe in fairies and angels. I believe in nature's spirit, that there are other realms, other planets, life forms.”

“I'd hate to be a sex symbol. Because you're always having to live up to an image. I haven't got time to sit around doing my nails.”

“I'm into the law of attraction and quantum physics. Like cosmic ordering. It's all about thinking lovely things that you would like in life, and feeling good about them before they manifest, so that by the time they do, you don't want them because you're on to your next desire.”

“I am extremely content in my life - sometimes to the point where I really should find something to moan about!”

“After playing Saffy in 'Ab Fab', I needed to take time out from acting to see if I really wanted to do it. I had been doing it for a very long time and I was being sent the same sort of scripts again and again.”

“Actors think they're far more important than they are, and that can only lead to hurt. People with colossal self-importance have very far to fall.”

“My dad's so likeable, you wouldn't feel in competition with him. If any boyfriends have ever felt that, they're long gone.”