Quotes from Nicola Walker

There wasn't really anything I wanted to do other than acting, which is ridiculous because there were no actors in my family, and we didn't know anything about acting.

'Spooks' was unique. It took up such a lot of your life - I think we did 10 episodes for the first few seasons. That's six months of your life.

I am very good at keeping secrets, except when I am drunk, when I will tell you absolutely anything.

Once I was asked to do celebrity rowing, where they taught people who had been to Oxford or Cambridge to row against each other. That sounded like too much hard work: really early mornings and having to be quite fit, which I'm not.

I find the whole ceremony of marriage a bit like going to work. Putting on a lovely dress and make-up, learning lines, someone doing your hair.

It always makes me laugh to think that I get to sit around and chat with people like Anne Reid and Derek Jacobi and get paid for it.

I don't really have a treasured possession, but I do love my family's proper old photo album. We all have hundreds of photos on our phones now, but you can't beat the old albums stuffed with black-and-white wedding photographs and 1970s Polaroids.

When the acting all dries up, I won't be going there - either to the police force or to the church. I'll have to think of something else!

I would like to think that there are more women in positions of power, to actually get these projects off the ground that are more balanced, where the story is about men and women.

Roast potatoes - I can't say no. At Christmas, I reach over for the fifth or sixth one, and I think I could keep going until I explode.

Most people feel like they're out of step, so just have the conviction to go your own way.

I took a long time after 'Curious' to find something I really wanted to do.

People very rarely know my real name but recognise me as characters from my shows, such as 'Last Tango In Halifax.'

I don't have a preferred medium of work, but like all actors, I do like to move from one to the other if possible.

It can be tough to turn things down, but as an actor, being in demand is a nice problem to have.

I'd be an absolutely appalling detective... Appalling.

It's totally different playing a lawyer and a detective.

I live in dread that I might find myself in some sort of emergency, and everyone will turn to me and expect me to know what the correct procedures are.

There are a lot of women - directors, producers, writers - involved in my career. They are all interested in telling good stories, and good stories involve men and women.

The people I've met who are divorce lawyers, there's a sense of them having to look reassuringly expensive.

In this industry, people like to look at different faces on their screens - even I do.

If you could make telly as good as radio, it would be amazing - audio can do things so easily that television can't.

I want to watch telly that reflects the world I see.

I'm a proper Essex girl because my family was part of that great exodus from the East End.