Talulah Riley

“I'm terrified I'm about to die, or that all the people I love are about to die, every second of every day.”

“I went to quite an academic school, and all my friends were going to university, but even before my acting jobs, I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to spend another three years being institutionalised, and I feel that getting out of that system benefited me in quite a few ways.”

“My parents used to call me 'The Little Frog,' because whenever they asked how I knew something, I'd say 'read it,' which sounds a bit like a frog croak.”

“I used to ride horses when I was younger. Ponies were my life. I miss being fearless.”

“I got into physics through pop science and quantum science and ended up being such a quantum groupie.”

“Marriage is a social construct, but I still believe in it.”

“I have an existential crisis every time I walk into a bookshop, knowing that I'm not going to read all the books before I die.”

“I grew up in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, and reading was a big part of my life - I'd get through several books a week.”

“I have an obsession with mortality. I saw a friend die when I was 18, and I can't get over it.”

“Men are visual creatures.”

“I have a checklist of things I'd like to do in movies. One of them is get possessed. Die on a deathbed with a ghostly pallor - that's on my list.”

“Dark matter is interesting. Basically, the universe is heavier than it should be. There's whole swathes of stuff we can't account for.”

“I'm a big reader, so when I was in 'Pride and Prejudice,' or, like, in Poirots and Marples, those are all books that I loved, and so it was really exciting for me to inhabit characters from literature that I knew and recognized.”

“I think I was a pretty normal student; I just followed most of my friends.”

“I'm not some sort of tormented soul looking for an identity in the roles I take. I became an actress because I just love dressing up and playing.”

“The things I wanted to do from a very early age - ie. get married and have children - precluded a lot of guys my own age from wanting to have anything to do with me.”

“My dad is Scottish, and he read in the newspaper about the plight of the Scottish Freshwater Mussel, which is a real thing - like, a very real, serious conservation issue. And he's a writer, and he was going to do a film about a Glaswegian gangster, and then I stole the idea and turned it into a romantic comedy.”

“There's a real power in heels and a good dress.”