Quotes from Andrea Riseborough

Every time you get the chance to work with somebody you admire and would like to collaborate with... it feels like the best opportunity that's ever come your way, whether that's in fringe theatre or a really big-budget Hollywood movie.

Fear is the enemy. I distrust it. Any feeling or decision I make that might be motivated by fear I quickly reassess.

I don't like getting dressed up. It's hard because as a woman, as an actor, the whole world wants you to enjoy dressing up.

I am a Graham Greene fan - I'm just a ferocious reader. I read an awful lot when I get the time.

I am quite odd-looking in real life.

I think, really, what I'm interested in is whole women, real people.

Women are really complex and totally enigmatic. Humans are really complex, but in film, we've only ever seen that with men. We've seen antiheroes time and again with male characters.

Shakespeare was the thing that started me off on that train, you know, and every one of his plays. There are so many different characters, and the wonderful thing about being in an all-girls school was I got to play them all, you know. So I got to play Mercutio and Oberon and Malvolio - it was great.

I've always thrown like a girl.

It's hard for us to imagine, as humans, that we'll become less powerful. But it'll be healthier for the planet and for the eco-system if that does happen. If humans are going to merge with machines, then let's get on with it. I love humans, but I also love dinosaurs - I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have wanted them to die out, either.

I worked on 'Happy-Go-Lucky' for seven-and-a-half months, and I'm in it for two minutes - largely because Sally Hawkins turned left instead of right.

I've worked opposite so many male actors whose egos have been so delicate that it was just so hard to do the work.

There's always hope, and there's always despair.

Both of my grandfathers fought in the Second World War, and my great-grandfather died at the Somme in the First World War. I never truly believed that the War just finished and everyone was happy-clappy, brought out the bunting, and felt everything was okay again. That's definitely not my impression of the fall-out of war.

People think I'm totally crackers.

My grandparents were deeply affected by war, and it was obvious that the men who fought were horribly affected, as were the women who remained at home.

I think impersonation is a great art. It's something that I enjoy doing, in a frivolous and lighthearted way. But I don't flatter myself to think I'm an impersonator.

I always do a lot of work around characters to make them real people because, oftentimes, they really are a sliver of a person. Even with truly wonderful writers, women characters are there to emote, and they're often incredibly chaste or worthy. Or they're a 'different type of woman', which is the worst.

I get scared of really simple things and not scared of big things.

Maybe I've just been incredibly fortunate, but there's a level of dedication, devotion, intensity and seriousness around me every day.

Transformation as a female actor is allowed up to a certain extent - as long as they can still recognize you on a red carpet. For a woman to be a shape-shifter, and to be that malleable in spirit, is really not OK with the patriarchy.

When you're playing a romantic version of a real person, you're playing a version of the truth.

I have quite a collection of ironic band T shirts.

Puberty is an extremely traumatic process even if you don't realize it. It kind of lives with you for like 10 years.