Andrea Riseborough

I'm not even sure that any of us are ever ready for anything. We can be ripe, or over-ready, but what is that moment when we're actually ready?

Puberty is an extremely traumatic process even if you don't realize it. It kind of lives with you for like 10 years.

I have no interest in doing anything other than good work.

I always do a lot of work around characters to make them real people because, oftentimes, they really are a sliver of a person. Even with truly wonderful writers, women characters are there to emote, and they're often incredibly chaste or worthy. Or they're a 'different type of woman', which is the worst.

I think every work is hard in different ways.

I love the company of actors, but the crazier it gets, the more I've come to realise how valuable my time is with my friends who work on the land or are builders or, you know, make music. Work in offices. Run shops.

I've worked opposite so many male actors whose egos have been so delicate that it was just so hard to do the work.

I don't read reviews, and it's not because I don't think I can learn something, I'm sure I could learn a lot. I just that I feel very passionately about the work and especially when you're doing theater, you really only need one director and when you read reviews, you feel like you have twelve, because you respond to them, naturally.

Every time you get the chance to work with somebody you admire and would like to collaborate with... it feels like the best opportunity that's ever come your way, whether that's in fringe theatre or a really big-budget Hollywood movie.

Transformation as a female actor is allowed up to a certain extent - as long as they can still recognize you on a red carpet. For a woman to be a shape-shifter, and to be that malleable in spirit, is really not OK with the patriarchy.