Keeley Hawes

“I don't punish myself. Life's too short.”

“It's very easy to keep putting off having a family if you enjoy your job, but you just have to get on with life.”

“We're not an acting family, but my parents have always encouraged me.”

“The funny thing about children is that, whichever room we're in, that's where they'll be. If I'm in the bath, they'll want to be in there too, playing with the toothbrush pot or brushing my hair.”

“When you get into your 40s, the roles do tend to drop off, and I've seen it happening to friends of mine. Hopefully it is improving, and there are female TV executives now who are championing women of all ages in leading roles. But I'm not counting on it.”

“I was never one of those teenagers who sang into their hairbrush.”

“Coming from a family where the parents had been together for 40 years, you never imagine that divorce is going to happen to you.”

“Something like a divorce does change you, but children change you more, and now I've had three.”

“Life is simply too short to think about everything you put in your mouth, and it's not good for children to see you picking over bits of salad.”

“There's always a sense of tragedy with icons. It happened to both the Princess of Wales and Diana Dors. A lot of people had grown up with them, and everybody loved them. Then, when they had at last found happiness, they were taken in the most dreadful way.”

“There are all sorts of ways you can take somebody's identity or change your own, and a million things you can do with it once you have. It's quite incredible.”

“The Turkish people are the friendliest I've ever met.”

“I love fashion; I adore it. I love the madness of it.”

“I'm a total stationery fiend - I have drawers and drawers of lovely printed cards and wrapping paper.”

“I hope to be still acting when I'm 70 on TV, film and theatre.”

“I prefer watching movies on the sofa rather than sitting next to Bob Geldof at a premiere and wanting to kill yourself.”

“When you think about such fine actors as Maggie Smith or Michael Gambon, they do all mediums. I think it would be quite sad and a bit dull just to have to stick to one. I like all of them.”

“I've stopped worrying about whether people think what I do is any good. I've taken stick in the past, and I've genuinely worried and got incredibly upset.”

“I think if you do a lot of interviews, you're laying yourself open. If you put yourself out, accept every invitation to every premiere, then you can't really complain when people knock on your front door and photograph you in the street.”

“I'm not saying that every night of the week, my husband, ex-husband, our children and I all sit around together like one big happy family. But we do see each other frequently, and everyone loves each other, and we are all friends.”