Quotes from Romola Garai

If you are a 19-year-old woman, there are very specific things that directors and the people in positions of power in the industry - who tend to be older men - are going to want you to be and do. They are not going to want some chatty, difficult, slightly spoilt girl.

Postwar Europe was morally stagnant, and there was a lot of neo-conservatism.

Films about women and their concerns are seen as frivolous, limited and, most damaging of all, niche.

Normally, when you're working on something, there are other characters that you have alliances with, and you have unified goals with some characters.

I cheated at the Model United Nations when I was 13 and had to get up and apologise in front of the whole conference.

Female ambition is such a complicated thing to play because it is an aggressive quality, and people respond very badly to women exhibiting any kind of aggression.

I think it's very repressive for a woman to be constantly told that she has to make films about women to better represent women, but then the reverse is not found.

Nowadays, most women just assume they have a right to be in the workplace, and any kind of discrimination they suffer is sort of more creeping.

You don't have to conform to a very specific aesthetic today, whereas 1950s women definitely had to.

Women don't question themselves when they enter into a story that has male characters, but men do question the validity of a female narrative.

I get quite disappointed that we're still telling stories that I think are problematic in terms of what they're saying about women.

I've always scribbled, and I still do it. I've written numerous scripts for films for which I think I'd be perfect as the complex, intelligent and, yes, modern heroine. Embarrassingly bad, all of them. I've had to come to terms with the fact that I'm not a writer.

In a way, I'd rather go into an interview and be disliked, and have unpleasant things written about me, than to have a wonderful, glowing article written that is in no way a reflection of who I am.

My alter egos have changed a lot over the years. When I was a child, I was a black horse called Storm. Whinnying and jumping over bamboo poles in the garden took up pretty much my entire childhood.

I want people to think I'm sexy, but to know also that I've got an ordinary body and not feel intimidated.

We live in a society where children are expected to become adults overnight.

There are still journalists who risk their lives in situations of conflict, versus those who sit behind a desk at 'News of the World' to report on whether someone is going out with somebody or not.

I was brought up with a very strong sense of what can happen if your society starts to chip away at the small victories women have won for themselves.

I've worked with actors who tell everyone what to do in the scene - that makes me go pretty atomic.

Acting is a strange job because your control is very limited.

I'm an actor. And like a lot of actors, it's very important that everybody loves you all the time.