Lesley Sharp

“Playgrounds are like microcosms of the world, aren't they? So you look around and you go, 'This is the world, is it? It doesn't work for me. I'm not the beautiful one, I'm not the popular one, I'm not the funny one. There are all these types and I'm not any of them.' And when you're not any of them, you're sort of invisible.”

“I didn't want to be invisible. I don't know what I wanted to be, but it wasn't invisible.”

“If you start doing a television or a film job and you suddenly think it's a mistake - the director's horrible or the people you work with aren't very kind, or whatever - it's much easier to deal with because it's in bite-sized chunks. You do it, you go home.”

“I think there are some people who have those childhoods that are really bad and so what happens is that they find an escape through pretending to be other people.”

“My career was never built on being a great beauty so it's not like I look back at being 25 and I'm shuddering because that youthfulness has gone.”

“Andrew Lincoln is an amazing actor and turned into a great friend.”

“You're immediately in a world of noir when you're watching shows like 'The Bridge' or 'The Killing.'”

“I didn't want to be classified as a northern actress.”

“It's a very tricky situation to be in when you're actually friends with someone but they're also your boss.”

“A girl at school once said to me, 'You are an overfed, under-washed farmhand.' I was 12.”

“You have to talk about the things that make you sad and angry, that you feel could be changed, and you have to listen.”

“I felt desperately sad, because it's a real shock in the 21st century, where we're fortunate to live in amazing country like the U.K., that there are areas where young women feel so desperate about what their future should be.”

“Just because I'm older, I'm not ready to ease off. I'm interested, I want to do stuff.”

“I do bikram yoga as often as I can - and if I can't, I'll go for a run.”

“What's brilliant is having the opportunity to come to a piece of work with no preconceptions.”

“All the Enid Blyton books - they opened my eyes to a bunch of kids living a life that was so far away from mine.”

“The way you look, the way you sound, is always something that you have to circumnavigate.”

“My mum died when I was 15, unfortunately.”

“I just think that, you know, what young actors actors and actresses have to factor into their work is all of the social media and the pressures that come from social media and the scrutiny that they're under and so nothing goes under the radar.”

“Really complicated, interesting women at the centre of very, very well written dramas - and that's what floats my boat.”