THANDIE NEWTON

Having children is life-changing, to state the obvious. It's a gigantic shift in your life and I welcomed it.

Then I became a mother and it just fills every space, that isn't filled with something else important. It's just like this incredible balloon that blows up and fills life up.

I never understood the point of juicing - I always thought I could get enough nutrients from eating fruit and vegetables - but now I'm a convert.

If we're all living in ourselves and mistaking it for life, then we're devaluing and desensitizing life.

I don't put the pressure on myself to be a very successful movie star. I want to enjoy being an actor and I want to be challenged by the roles I take.

I can hardly find the words to describe the peace I felt when I was acting. My dysfunctional self could actually plug in to another self, not my own, and it felt so good.

I see a wiser person than when I was younger: having babies, and passing 30, were the turning points. What women in their 40s - I am 39 - lack in gorgeousness, they make up for in wisdom. I love ageing, despite the drawbacks - thinner, drier skin.

If I could change my appearance, I would have the gap between my front teeth put back in.

I'd love to do yoga every day. I don't usually have time, but a few sun salutations go a long way.

When I am out and about I feel watched. It's become second nature. The only time I get to be private is in my work. That is when I liberate the ego. The blessed-out sensation of liberating the ego.

I use the film industry as a pleasure for work and that kind of thing and it's not a pursuit to make me feel happy in my life.

We each have a self, but I don't think that we're born with one. You know how newborn babies believe they're part of everything; they're not separate? Well that fundamental sense of oneness is lost on us very quickly. It's like that initial stage is over - oneness: infancy, unformed, primitive. It's no longer valid or real.

When I first started, as long as you were a bit brown, you could play any kind of ethnic anything. Now it's much more localised and specific. I feel like a wise old woman looking back on the evolution of how much more sophisticated audiences are.

I'm always angry. I wake up angry. There is a lot to be angry about. Anger is a positive energy.

I'm good at playing the emotionally strangled person. The woman who is in the worst place in her life. That's me!

Often, when you go to the movies or the theatre, you think, Jesus Christ, everybody is white. But my daughter goes to an amazing dance school called Ballet Black, and they have every colour: dark, white, mixed. It looks like the future to me.

We're all the same, and we all want the same thing. We all want to be secure. We all want food on the table. We want to know that our kids aren't going to be destroyed when they're not with us. We all want the same things, and if we've been hurt in our childhoods, we try and recreate the same hurt.

I was absolutely blown away when I first talked to Lisa Joy and Jonah Nolan at how ambitious they wanted 'Westworld' to be in looking at the drives that are leading human beings over the cliff of existence.

You need a good, healthy diet - it's about finding out what your body needs. Sugar is a disaster for skin, as is white flour.

We have all the power. Us consumers have all the power, and if we can show that, 'Hey, I want transparency,' Hey, I want something that's going to be nutritious and great,' then suddenly, kale will be all over the marketplace, and turmeric will be all over the marketplace.

I guess patriarchal stereotypes have, as is true for most people, created painful moments in my life. As a result, I'm an activist. I'm for women's rights, children's rights, human rights, animal rights. I want to be part of the solutions to try to correct imbalance. And 'Westworld,' for me, is that.

I was the black atheist kid in the all-white Catholic school run by nuns.

I do a lot of jivamukti yoga; it keeps me supple, strong and focused.

I love being in my forties. Just getting there and realising that you haven't grown horns or boils on your bum, when all the time it had been this thing looming in the future, is such a relief.

Tell a story with your eyes when you face the camera - it makes all the difference. My best tip for making skin look good in photographs is to go easy on the make-up. You don't want it to look heavy and mask-like.