RACHAEL STIRLING

I want to be around when I'm 60; I don't want to be some flash in the pan.

I really resent how expensive everything is in London.

I used to worry about the lack of roles for women over 40. But suddenly, everyone has realised it's interesting to have a drama with a woman at the centre of it.

I feel sexier in my 40s than I did in my 20s and 30s.

Having brothers - I love that. They don't take any rubbish, and they beat you up if you've been misbehaving.

If I'd been an actor in the 1940s, I would have been in fashion.

I had been kind of quite porky and happy at boarding school and not self-conscious at all; then, suddenly, I found myself in auditions being examined, and it made me angry.

I think if I'd been born ten years earlier when Ma was at the height of 'Avengers' fame, it would have been a different kettle of fish altogether, but she was very much a ma first and an actress second for my formative years.

I was always drawn to standing up in front of people.

I do panic when I'm out of work, and there have been long periods of that. And I'm not a good auditionee. I talk myself out of jobs in front of the director and suggest other people who would be better.

Kristin Scott Thomas is terrific. She has a career in France and a career in England: how cool is that? I wouldn't mind that.

She was just Ma, and I didn't grow up in some kind of acting dynasty: Orson Welles didn't come round and give me a piggyback; Vivien Leigh never read me a bedtime story. It was just my mum and our housekeeper, whom I adored, and after that, it was boarding school.

If you've got 15 actors on stage who are all trying to shine a light on themselves, they are all trying to outshine each other. Whereas if you have 14 of those actors trying to shine a light on one person, and each of them is trying to make the other look good, you have a much more interesting process.

I fell upon Jenny Saville's work and loved these great big pieces she was painting, celebrating all things flesh and woman, and with great big Simone Beauvoir quotations written in mirror writing so you had to look at yourself in the pictures to read them.

My mum is still totally rocking it. She's appearing in 'Game of Thrones,' which is massively cool.

When going out on a date, I think there are certain old-fashioned manners that I still enjoy. I don't mean that as an anti-feminist comment. I just mean it as a pro-women comment. There must be a place for us to exist and our differences to exist without one taking away from the other.

Just laughing a lot would be the most important thing in a relationship to me. And a smattering of trust. A dollop of laughter - and an icing of trust.

I love growing older. Normally, I don't bother with make-up. This face in the mirror is changing. I've got new lines from smiling at the sprog so much.

I seem to be able to go from part to part without being recognised, which I like. When I was little, I resented it with every fibre of my being when Ma was recognised. Another way of looking at celebrity, though, is it's being famous for being brilliant at something.

I eat healthily, I do ballet and exercise, and I'm toned and tight, but I take up space, and I don't aspire to anorexia.

I like cake, I swear a lot, and I hardly ever go to the hairdresser. I don't think I'm a movie star.

I did ballet as a child and started again seven years ago. I love that you hear this exquisite music, and for a moment, you feel like a thing of beauty; it's changed my awareness of my body.

My pa is a brilliant, charming man. We go out and play together and laugh a lot. He has a twinkle in his eye.

I was not one of those children hanging on Ma's coat-tails following her round sets. I'd go to the theatre after school if she was working, but I didn't even know what an agent was.

I find the idea that some kids go into acting because of their parents butt-clenchingly embarrassing. I've gone out of my way to prove myself as a separate being. I don't want to be seen as a subset of someone else.