Ruth Bradley

“We're all a result of our early years and our nature and nurture.”

“I don't know any woman who's one dimensional, not a single one.”

“On the Tube, you never see anyone looking you in your eye. They're all looking down at their screen.”

“All too often, female characters, in particular, aren't multi-layered enough.”

“Very often, as an actress, there's some kind of stereotype, but with any good script, you should be able to swap the genders of all the characters, and it shouldn't make a huge difference.”

“If you're aware of a pattern, you can do something about it, and you can be aware of your own culpability. I like to think I can do that, but, like everyone else, I'm a work in progress.”

“When I was filming in Budapest for ITV's 'Titanic,' I realised I'd never been to the ballet before so decided to see a production of 'Giselle.' I went on my own. As it was my first ballet, it was a very bizarre and interesting experience but very enjoyable.”

“My job is not to be a supermodel.”

“I saw 'The Help' on DVD. I was blown away by Viola Davis: she really straddled that fine line in the plot between what was tragic and what was heart-warming.”

“I really enjoy 'Mad Men,' but I'm hugely into 'Homeland.' The characters are very well drawn and complex.”

“If you think about it, there's very little about young families on TV, and yet there's so many of them.”

“I'm only ambitious in the sense that I want to work in as many different media as I can and to play characters which are different to me and to each other. I want to do work that frightens me or challenges me, be it in Dublin or Zimbabwe. I just want to be working.”

“I think when you work with older actors, who are so good, it's rare that they are egotistical.”

“I didn't know my mother was an actress until I was eight and she went back to work. At an even younger age than that, I'd wanted to be an actress, so when I saw her, I clearly remember thinking, 'This is a strange coincidence.'”

“In an ideal world, we would be able to just swap characters' genders around because I don't ever wake up in the morning and think to myself, 'Oh I am such a woman today,' because that is just so ridiculous.”

“I did a film a few years ago where I gained a lot of weight for it. I was happy to do that because it was called for in the script.”

“A friend of mine told me she's going to freeze her eggs, and I thought, 'Well, I also don't want to be a 55-year-old first time mother,' so you kind of just have to go with what happens.”

“I consider myself lucky to be going about my business doing something I love.”

“In life, with my friends, I don't see them as male or female; I just see them as people.”

“In secondary school, I became aware of the idea of being cool, and that was a bit of a shell shock.”