Lesley Sharp

“We can't all have faces like Elizabeth Taylor or Angelina Jolie.”

“My father served in the Royal Scots Fusiliers for many years.”

“My first idol was Dick Emery, this man on the telly who was a sexpot one minute, then a vicar with dodgy teeth. Transformation - I think that's what he represented to me.”

“Everyone has a certain hand dealt to them and you just have to work out whether you can keep going. The thing is, I don't know what I would do if I didn't act.”

“I think as a police officer when you're dealing with a member of the public you put something on because you have to appear to be this person who knows what they're talking about, and of course you're also trying to figure out the Rubik's cube of why people behave in the way that they do.”

“I don't dislike anything, but I am definitely finding the ageing process 'interesting' and not wholly comfortable.”

“When I was in Stephen Poliakoff's 'Playing With Trains,' someone wrote that I was 'moon-faced'. That taught me not to read my reviews.”

“I don't think I've ever gone home and not been able to shake it off. I like having my own life too much!”

“We're 50 per cent of the population so it's appropriate we're reflected everywhere as people who take part in society in a really proactive way - that women aren't just reactive, they're out there doing stuff.”

“When I was in my 20s, I think there was a lot of really arcane male behaviour that wasn't even questioned.”

“I don't think anyone's interested particularly in watching stuff that's just about two-dimensional characters anymore.”

“I got on a train to London when I was 18 and never moved back.”

“I love euro TV drama, there's some fantastic shows.”

“Now I belong to this fantastic group called The London Writers Salon, which runs Monday to Friday with sessions in London, New York and L.A. and you can log in to them all and basically write in the company of 300 other people, with nobody chatting.”

“Learning lines is bloody boring.”

“I'd love to be beyond beautiful, for it to be acknowledged that my face was a wonder - like Monica Bellucci or Sophia Loren.”

“If you get hung up on the history of a part then you're on a hiding to nothing.”

“Male actors don't get asked about playing strong men; they're just men.”

“There is something quintessentially northern in my DNA, even though I've lived in London since I was 18.”

“'Scott and Bailey' was very much forensically interested in the ins and outs of the way they went about cracking a case from the point of something happening to how they managed to arrest someone.”