Quotes from Anne-Marie Duff

There are people out there with three jobs and small children. Being an actor is a walk in the park compared to working as a cleaner overnight. I'm lucky I'm not plucking chickens.

When my baby was born, I felt like somebody had spiked my drink, and I suddenly was so full of love that it was a little bit as if I was drugged. I didn't think that anyone could feel that way.

I'm always dancing in my kitchen. And I love to sing. I've always sung. My father was a lovely singer. Always sang Jim Reeves at parties.

I suppose it's whether you want to be a famous person, or whether you want to be an actor. You have to decide what your priorities are. Great actor, huge star. Sometimes, the two walk hand in hand. Most of the time, they don't.

Any kind of conflict draws me to a role.

I try very hard not to take work home, but it can be tricky. Sometimes it feels as if you are wearing your costume underneath your own clothes! I suppose things are always ticking away in the back of your mind.

I was desperately shy when I was wee. Totally lacked confidence socially. When I look back at school photographs, I'm always the one shrinking in the back. What I really wanted to do was become a writer, and I don't think the residue of that has ever gone away. I still feel the ultimate achievement would be to write a novel.

I'm someone who laughs a lot and cries a lot.

Your heart... it's a very fragile muscle. You have to take care of it, be old-fashioned about it.

Oh, I must be ambitious, mustn't I? I'm sure I always have been. I think you can only get away with pretending you're not for so long. After that, it becomes ridiculous.

It's a privilege to do what I do for a living - to take people out of their miserable day, or to educate somebody, or make somebody laugh, or fall in love with an idea. How good is that? And I get paid to do it!

People can be a bit flagrant when they're having an affair. Most of the time, there's an element of it where they want to be discovered because they're in crisis. They need the boil to be burst, in some way, for a resolution.

The experience of having a child does crack you wide open. I felt like I suddenly had to rebuild the skin that I'd grown over the years before having a child. Perhaps that might be quite interesting in terms of acting.

Nothing is more diminishing than trying to control success or hold on to things.

I was very lucky in that my parents were very broad-minded. Because they had come from another country and hadn't been able to fulfill their dreams, they wanted me to be more of myself, if you know what I mean.

That's the thing - you do a job like 'Shameless,' and suddenly that's why you can get a job like 'The Virgin Queen', not because of all the classical theatre you've done. But we can be very snippy about television. It's absolutely the most potent and powerful form of storytelling we have.

In theatre, there's the director, the writer, and below them the actor. In film, it's the actors who are most important. That goes against the grain for me.

There are some roles you just don't say 'no' to. Those compass points: you get them so rarely as an actress.

The life of an actor is very random. It can be exhilarating but terrifying - you do wonder day to day where the next job will come from. Some of my friends are very talented people, but you see them out of work - which can be tough. If you wanted that kind of security, though, I guess you wouldn't be an actor in the first place.

You want to have enough of a profile to be able to do all the work you can, but at the same time you want to have your own space. But there are a lot of actors who achieve it, a lot of movie stars even, people like Emily Watson and Cate Blanchett. They seem to be able to carry on with their lives and still produce wonderful, high-profile work.

I am very lucky. I have known wonderful romantic love in my life but to actually see this little creature and find him to be the most beautiful creature in the world. I know all mothers and fathers feel that way.

The level of sacrifice in the world of dancing is incredibly intense, that work ethic if nothing else - get up, go to class, rehearsal, performance, get up, go to class - that's your life, and it's like that for a finite time, usually.

I think creative people need to do a bit of, you know, tuning into every radio station - you just do, otherwise you don't know much about other people. You kind of have to learn a bit about yourself so you can work out how we all behave and why we do the things we do.

When I started drama school, theatre was the main draw. I never had any movie star notions. Not that there were family ties to the theatre, either.