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Everyone seems agreed that writing about sex is perilous, partly because it threatens to swamp highly individualised characters in a generic, featureless activity (much like coffee-cup dialogue, during which everyone sounds the same), and partly because it feels... tacky.

I played a definite part in it. I guess the things that I played in films and the way the nudity and the love scenes were handled were really different.

It wasn't sexual in its element. I wasn't being exploited. I was doing what happened. It was very challenging because I played Phyllis from 15 years old to 53 when she died of breast cancer.

If you play it safe every time, then you're missing the best part of acting. You haven't learned anything about your humanity.

If you let the plot be determined by what you feel is in the character's mind at that point, it may not turn out to be a very good play, but at least it will be a play where people are behaving in a kind of truthful way.

A good play puts the audience through a certain ordeal.

'Sex and the City' is about outsiders. Single girls as lepers, should have been married by now. It's the reason the whole thing took off.

I think sex is a very minor part of most romance novels.

They are always very lax about putting restrictions on violence for children's movies, which I think is much more harrowing than sexuality for children.

None of my characters seem to have had sex yet - I haven't written about that. And I wouldn't want to deal with what's happening in Oregon - the school shootings.