My involvement in The Hours came late on in the proceedings. (I sometimes envy opera singers, who know five years in advance what they are going to be doing.) I didn’t have much time to prepare for the role of Vanessa Bell and was on the shoot for a very short time. But I thought it was a wonderful script, and subsequently enjoyed the book very much.

Why did I get into acting? I had an inspiring English teacher in senior school and for a couple of hours each week our class would work on pieces by Shakespeare, or another playwright on the syllabus, in groups, and I grew to love language and rhythm. I remember feeling profoundly connected and knew that something was working, but I didn’t know how or why.

I was still thinking about going to university but eventually rejected this in favour of “getting on with it”, and applied to drama schools instead. Included in these was the Bristol Old Vic (BOV) school, which very smartly advised me to reapply the following year, the implication being that I hadn’t seen enough of the world. They were right. So that year I just worked. I didn’t make a grand trail across Arabia Deserta or anything like that. I made a life in Bristol so that I could qualify for a grant from the local authority, having been rejected by Sefton, Merseyside, where I was living at the time. I worked in bars at night and stores and offices by day. I got involved with the local art centre and landed Polly Peachum in Brecht’s Threepenny Opera. I ushered at the theatre, watching shows, and took part in an amateur summer rep, dualling an Ayckbourn and Wait Until Dark in Cardigan Town Hall. Back in Bristol, I signed up for a comedy and farce course at the arts centre, run by the principal of the BOV, Nat Brenner, who one evening asked me what I planned to do with my life and on hearing of my wish to train at his school, promised me a place that autumn. So I was on my way.

It sounds very Pollyanna, but when I came out of drama school I just wanted to be utilised. There was no thought of fame as such, just a wish to do good work, get a crack at something and feel my muscles working. For me, this meant five years in rep, playing anything from an obese tea lady to Marilyn Monroe, before a sniff of a screen life. And it was great. The pressure to achieve now, the moment you leave drama school — if you even train — is quite daunting, I think. I find the life difficult enough as it is. Often I feel inadequate, or stupid, but occasionally there is a day when I feel, oh I am in the right profession after all. There was a day on Tom & Viv that I felt was working; A Lie of the Mind at the Royal Court was a happy experience for me, ditto Kansas City with Robert Altman and Spider with David Cronenberg. Success has been incremental. You have to be in this for the long haul — you have to want to do it. The business can be hideous, with its fashions and unfairnesses and rejections on a grand scale. If you find an agent who “gets” you, guard him or her with your life.

You have to look after yourself — make choices that you can live with, and do other things: fallow time is just as important as working. Find things that make you calm. And every now and then choose something that really frightens you.

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