Eve Best

If you're a woman doing classic theater, the big roles are often destroyers. I've played Hedda Gabler, Lady Macbeth, some of the Chekhovian heroines, Electra, Phaedra - they're all powerful women, but they're forces of negativity.

If a part terrifies me, that is definitely a reason to do it.

I love the Old Vic so deeply, it's like a second home.

I would love to go and live in the mountains... and make jam.

There's this funny thing with pilots that you have to sign the contract to do the whole job before you're even offered the part. And they make about a million pilots a year, but hardly any of them get turned into series.

I am so longing to be domestic,, cooking stew, gardening, hopefully having some children, painting, sitting still in one place.

I haven't done the milestoney things - getting married, buying a house, having children.

I don't like, and I've never been very good at, close-up shots. As soon as you have the camera right there in front of you, it feels like you're in a different reality from the person you are acting with; you lose any real connection with them.

When you are up close to an opera singer, hearing this incredible volume of noise coming from a human being - it's beyond belief.

Time is about the need to control. Let go of control and embrace what happens.