Quotes from Emily Mortimer

I guess secrets are part of the fabric of everybody's lives. I mean everybody's lives, and guilt is part of the fabric of everybody's lives.

Normal people, who can be good people but do bad things, are very interesting to me, and people that never get a parking ticket or never do a bad thing in their lives can be really dangerous.

I never felt I was quite the ticket academically. I always felt I had to put in an enormous amount of effort not to be disappointing. So I worked really hard, but at the time it suited me, because I didn't do very much else.

I borrowed my friend's car the other day in an attempt to persuade my husband that we needed a car and literally this is true, in the first day of borrowing the car, I got three tickets and I rear-ended it.

You are exposing yourself all the time as an actor. There's the risk of being thought of as bad or boring or unattractive.

Los Angeles is like a beauty parlor at the end of the universe.

I want any excuse to come home. My dad is not a spring chicken any more. If anyone says, 'Go buy a postage stamp in London ' I'll go and do it.

Lots of people there seemed to be in denial, in absolute denial, of death - everybody's pretending that death doesn't happen in L.A. if you do enough exercise and take enough wheatgrass and have your pill every day, you might not die.

51st State was one that I loved doing because the character was so out there, and in a way I was sad to leave the character behind. I'm afraid I could never be that cool in real life!

I decided to give acting a serious, committed try, and soon after, I read the script for 'Lovely and Amazing.' The story was beautiful and honest, and the characters struggled with the same insecurities many women - including me - face. I didn't think I had a chance in hell of being in the film, but I knew I had to go for it.

I'm just happy to be a film where for once I don't have to worry about my hair, because my managers are always complaining about my hair looking depressing in my movies. Which is true. I mean, it's true.

The thing I miss about L.A. is time. I feel like I had much more time there, partly because no one is ever really doing anything.

I'm physically completely mal-coordinated. My best friend used to make me run for the bus just to give herself a quick, cheap laugh because I definitely don't have that sophisticated cool thing down.

It is brilliant going to the theatre and being forced to sit and listen and think about life. It can be almost a near-religious experience.

I borrowed my friend's car the other day in an attempt to persuade my husband that we needed a car and literally this is true, in the first day of borrowing the car, I got three tickets and I rear-ended it.

I'm still shy - I'm no good at my children's parent-teacher conferences, and I'm slowly learning how to ask for what I want. But I now know that I have a reserve of courage to draw upon when I really need it. There's nothing that I'm too scared to have a go at.

I was terribly shy when I was growing up, I really wasn't confident with other people and I think I was always afraid of up or not being this very cool, amazing person that I wanted to be.

So what I do now is to pre-empt that by making the up into a virtue, and telling funny stories about how crap I am before people have a chance to notice it for themselves and think maybe I haven't realised.

My dad had this philosophy that if you tell children they're beautiful and wonderful then they believe it, and they will be. So I never thought I was unattractive. But I was never one of the girls at school who had lots of boyfriends.

It's a hard thing to do, to be given a script, and know that you've got to turn up on the first day of the shoot - generally without having had any rehearsal - and present a character. It's really baffling; it's incredibly hard to know how to begin, to approach it, other than just thinking about it.

Some people come alive at night. I'm hopeless by 9 p.m. Coffee and Cadbury buy me an extra half hour. Often I can't get my clothes off I'm so far gone.

I'm just happy to be a film where for once I don't have to worry about my hair, because my managers are always complaining about my hair looking depressing in my movies. Which is true. I mean, it's true.

When I'm panicked about my love handles, I go to the YMCA and get obsessed with Kid Rock videos as I'm on the running machine.

I think half the time I just assume I don't really know what I'm doing - you have to do that to a certain extent, but you don't have to think you're an idiot savant.