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'Beauty Queen' is the weirdest, strangest, and most perfect play to do before 'Hedda Gabler', because there are so many similar issues for Maureen and Hedda. I had played leading ladies before but couldn't really hook into them. After 'An American Daughter' and 'Beauty Queen', I had all the ballast.

What's the point of doing a brilliant Hedda Gabler in my back garden if no one will ever see it?

There are so many huge roles in the theatre: if you've got the option to play Hedda Gabler on stage, why wouldn't you choose that over a three-line part in a Hollywood film as somebody's maid or somebody's wife or somebody's best friend?

When I saw 'Legally Blonde' on Broadway, I rang my agent and said 'I want to be seen for this,' but the rest weren't big choices, really. 'Hedda Gabler' was a phone call offering it to me, and as I've said before quite embarrassingly, I didn't know the play, so I didn't sit there thinking 'I would now like to tackle Ibsen.'

As an actor you get categorized by other people, but it's not like I arrange myself into comedy mode or serious mode. If it's good writing you just have to play it true - if it's funny, it's funny. But obviously you don't want it to be amusing if you're playing Hedda Gabler!

If you're a woman doing classic theater, the big roles are often destroyers. I've played Hedda Gabler, Lady Macbeth, some of the Chekhovian heroines, Electra, Phaedra - they're all powerful women, but they're forces of negativity.

I've always wanted to play 'Lady Macbeth' and Strindberg's 'Miss Julie'.

Growing up I was a total movie-holic, but I always wanted to play the role that Clark Gable was playing or Spencer Tracy was playing. I was really never interested in the parts that women were playing. I found the parts that guys were playing were so much more interesting.

In terms of the characters I think are really fun to play, a lot of times it's someone in my head saying 'I know that woman.'