I never wanted celebrity. It's not a game I've ever been interested in. My life leads my work, and I wouldn't want it to be the reverse.

[on Husbands and Wives (1992)] I think it's a great film. Except for the bits I'm in. I was slightly over the top. There's that golden rule that you don't want to see the acting. And I thought I could. The director just let me go. We can't blame Woody Allen for that one.

[2013, on Dark Blood (2012)] I can't imagine what he (George Sluizer) could have cobbled together. What would be the interest in an unfinished film, other than a rather questionable curiosity in River (Phoenix)? I don't care personally. Makes no difference to me.

[on working with David Lean in A Passage to India (1984)] He was a frightening, Lear-like figure. He came with this enormous reputation but he wasn't at the height of his physical powers, and I think he carried a lot of tension because of that. I perhaps didn't appreciate that fully at the time, probably because I was overly aware of my own inadequacies. So when David tensed up, I tensed up. I've never been very good at being snapped at. I went into self-defence mode. It was endlessly fascinating watching Lean and the turmoil he was in. How he tried to dig himself out of it. Entire days' filming would be cancelled because he'd decide the set needed to be re-dressed. Obviously he simply didn't feel ready to shoot that day. It was all very...interesting.

I wish I tanned. It would make everybody happy and get them off my back. But this is the look I was born with, and I'm stuck with it.

Of course, I'm not a celebrity. Never wanted to be one. Never promoted myself as one. I'm an actress. I think there's a difference. To be a celebrity, one really has to go after it, and want it.

A lot of really good directors have a killer in them, as if they'd do anything to get that image. But that comes with the terrain and I don't mind it.

"It's like you're getting ready to go to Cinderella's ball. And then, when you lose, it's like you wake up and realize you're not Cinderella." (on being an Oscar nominee)

I've never worked for the sake of working. There's probably enough crap out there for me not to add to it.

I was always terribly shy, so a great thing that acting has done for me has forced me out of myself and made me more generous.

When I first started acting, and we would all sit down and talk about Shakespeare and how great it was, I thought well, I suppose it is. It is if you get to play Macbeth or Hamlet. But who wants to play bloody Lady Macbeth or Ophelia? And it struck me that most women seem to be required to pit themselves against men in dramatic situations, and the men got to pit themselves against ideas or God.

[on working with David Lean] There was a touch of the bully about him - he'd take it out on the people who were the weakest and most dependent.