I'm very shocked when I look at television and I see such an aggressive youth and image obsession in the representation of women on our screens.

Something like 'Sex And The City' was insulting - women all clawing on to their youth when there's such ripe territory in honestly exploring women's lives as they get older.

I lost a girlfriend when I was in my 30s. She was 46. It all sounds so trite, but I put a Post-it on my dressing-room wall. It said, 'The past is history. The future is a mystery. This moment is a gift, which is why it's called the present.'

I grew up without the rose-tinted look at the profession many of my friends had, but I've been very lucky playing major roles in 'An Ideal Husband', 'Arcadia' and 'The Memory of Water'.

I'm from a small Irish family of 10, so there always was music in the house. Growing up, my older sisters had things like 'South Pacific' and opera on.

It's understandable why TV hasn't been diverse because a lot of TV writers are white dudes from Harvard. And white dudes from Harvard aren't going to immediately want to write about trans issues. They're not immediately going to want to write about a Filipino family.

Sometimes it's more tiring being at home with your child than it is being at work! But I thrive on variety, so if you can get a good balance in your life, then I think that's the key.

My parents adopted me, and then, by the age of four or five, I was asking all sorts of questions, and they found themselves with a son who was interested in the sorts of things that they valued but weren't natural to them.