Do you have any secret tattoos?
I have a small bluebird on my back, which I had done when I was 19 and travelling around Brazil with my sister.
What’s the funniest thing you’ve read about yourself?
I’d been doing interviews all day. The last one was with a tabloid and the headline the next day read: ‘I might look intelligent but I’m as thick as shit.’ Which I think I did say.
What advice would you give your 18-year-old self?
Don’t believe everything you think — or feel.
What would you eat for your last supper?
I’d make Ottolenghi’s maqluba — a layered upside-down vegetable and rice cake. I’d share it with my closest family and some old fruity friends like Rupert Everett.
What last made you cry?
I’m always crying. I get a lump in my throat when I see intimacy between parents and their children.
What keeps you up in the middle of the night?
My hormones. I don’t mean that I want sex. It’s this feeling that I’m a fish caught on a hook rising to the surface.
When have you felt at your sexiest?
When I feel most powerful.
What has been your greatest mistake?
I still get caught up in my own drama and have to remind myself that everything passes.
What did you buy with your first pay cheque?
A pair of suede boots and a Jean Paul Gaultier-type frock coat, both of which I then left on a train.
What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?
A German advert for white fish sauce; we had to eat loads of it.
What’s been your biggest fashion mistake?
I should brush my hair more.
What’s your desert island boxset?
1930s American screwball comedies.
Is there a book that changed the way you thought about things?
The Wilder Shores of Love by Lesley Blanch. It’s about four Victorian women who are intoxicated by the Orient. Their neck-breaking passion woke a few synapses in my brain.
Do you have any superstitions?
In the theatre, if you say ‘Macbeth’, all the actors will start looking very anxious. I’m so well-trained not to say it in the theatre that I can hardly say it in normal life.
What’s your karaoke song?
‘Dancing with Myself’ by Nouvelle Vague.
Private Lives is in cinemas for one night only on Thursday 6 February (cinemalive.com)
