Quotes from Rachael Stirling

I panicked in my 20s and 30s about whether I was doing the right thing. I was an excited puppy, wanting to please people and feeling guilty that I'd had a privileged education and an acting career.

My mum says I never had tantrums. I had elongated and very complicated tea parties in my cot, and I was sort of talking, I guess, quite young, and I would say, 'Oh, how lovely to see you, do come in!' I'd have these theatrical tea parties by myself with my imaginary friends.

I fell upon Jenny Saville's work and loved these great big pieces she was painting, celebrating all things flesh and woman, and with great big Simone Beauvoir quotations written in mirror writing so you had to look at yourself in the pictures to read them.

My mum is still totally rocking it. She's appearing in 'Game of Thrones,' which is massively cool.

My instinct is to surround myself with the company of wise, witty, wonderful women, and I have a great bank of female friends of all ages.

I woke up famous for about a minute, then stopped being famous again.

Kristin Scott Thomas is terrific. She has a career in France and a career in England: how cool is that? I wouldn't mind that.

I used to worry about the lack of roles for women over 40. But suddenly, everyone has realised it's interesting to have a drama with a woman at the centre of it.

I seem to be able to go from part to part without being recognised, which I like. When I was little, I resented it with every fibre of my being when Ma was recognised. Another way of looking at celebrity, though, is it's being famous for being brilliant at something.

I was not one of those children hanging on Ma's coat-tails following her round sets. I'd go to the theatre after school if she was working, but I didn't even know what an agent was.

You're in this heightened emotional state from the beginning of the play. It's like when you first have your heart broken.

Not to harp on too much about Ma, but it's a misconception that she is formidable. She calls herself a patsy.

My mum was working in London, so I went to school there until I was 12. But every holiday would be in Scotland, and when I went to boarding school, I'd either be there or Scotland.

She was just Ma, and I didn't grow up in some kind of acting dynasty: Orson Welles didn't come round and give me a piggyback; Vivien Leigh never read me a bedtime story. It was just my mum and our housekeeper, whom I adored, and after that, it was boarding school.

I eat healthily, I do ballet and exercise, and I'm toned and tight, but I take up space, and I don't aspire to anorexia.

Just laughing a lot would be the most important thing in a relationship to me. And a smattering of trust. A dollop of laughter - and an icing of trust.

I really resent how expensive everything is in London.

If you aren't hot in Hollywood, you feel like you're in Siberia.

I did ballet as a child and started again seven years ago. I love that you hear this exquisite music, and for a moment, you feel like a thing of beauty; it's changed my awareness of my body.

In my bones, I feel like a Scot. I always have. My mum's from Doncaster, so whatever that is as a combination of Scotland and Yorkshire. It isn't southern.

I love growing older. Normally, I don't bother with make-up. This face in the mirror is changing. I've got new lines from smiling at the sprog so much.

There's a bit of a Bertie Wooster about my father. He's very easy-going, he never judges people, and we get on brilliantly.

I have never met anybody who likes 'The Detectorists' that I don't like.

My pa is a brilliant, charming man. We go out and play together and laugh a lot. He has a twinkle in his eye.