Quotes from Rachael Stirling

Having brothers - I love that. They don't take any rubbish, and they beat you up if you've been misbehaving.

My dad's Scottish, and I always used to say I was, too.

I want to be around when I'm 60; I don't want to be some flash in the pan.

I teach kids to read on a Saturday for this charity called Real Action. It's a voluntary school because lots of the kids around my area of London are from immigrant families and need extra help with reading.

I find the idea that some kids go into acting because of their parents butt-clenchingly embarrassing. I've gone out of my way to prove myself as a separate being. I don't want to be seen as a subset of someone else.

I feel sexier in my 40s than I did in my 20s and 30s.

Scotland was home to me from when I was 12 up until I was 22. I decided to drop my English bit, and when anyone asked where I came from, I always said Scotland. It really shaped the fibres of my being.

I had been kind of quite porky and happy at boarding school and not self-conscious at all; then, suddenly, I found myself in auditions being examined, and it made me angry.

I'm not really Bond girl material, and that's fine by me. I'm a grafter; I'm not a star.

I do panic when I'm out of work, and there have been long periods of that. And I'm not a good auditionee. I talk myself out of jobs in front of the director and suggest other people who would be better.

I suppose I'm what you'd called a character actress, so, often, my characters are quite extreme.

I suppose I'm quite manly in lots of ways, but I like to be made to feel like a woman.

I was brought up playing games and still do ferociously. I once played Connect Four on set with Bill Nighy and Richard E. Grant for so long that the assistant director got cross.

I was raised to please people in authority, and I'd also come from a sheltered boarding school, so I was very naive and young for my years.

I like cake, I swear a lot, and I hardly ever go to the hairdresser. I don't think I'm a movie star.

I can't think of anything better than being considered a poster girl for intelligent women.

If you've got 15 actors on stage who are all trying to shine a light on themselves, they are all trying to outshine each other. Whereas if you have 14 of those actors trying to shine a light on one person, and each of them is trying to make the other look good, you have a much more interesting process.

I take pleasure in discovering resourcefulness inside me.

'Ambitious' is seen as a dirty word, especially when it comes to women. But what being ambitious actually means is to achieve distinction in your chosen field.

I want to see craggy old faces on the telly. I find them infinitely more fascinating than pretty young ones.

I want the kind of feminism that allows me to have a voice and to compete on equal terms with men yet still, potentially, to have one of them hurl me over their shoulder and carry me off somewhere, because I still find proper, old-fashioned masculinity deeply attractive.

If I'd been an actor in the 1940s, I would have been in fashion.

I think if I'd been born ten years earlier when Ma was at the height of 'Avengers' fame, it would have been a different kettle of fish altogether, but she was very much a ma first and an actress second for my formative years.

If you get asked to play a part that makes you feel frightened, then you have to do it. 'Medea' is the opportunity of a lifetime.