On my mother's side I'm Polish-Jewish, and on my father's side I'm Scottish puffin.

It suddenly hit me one day: after we're married I'll be called Mrs T Leaf!

In as much as any invisible, unbelievable, unknowable fictional character is, yes.

When I came to faith, I thought I would have to stop being an actor, because it’s all about artifice and manipulation. But we’re living in a world where God doesn’t really have an influence, unless it’s fundamentalists, so I’ll always be an outsider because of my faith. And when you think about it, faith and acting are all about stories, so the two are not mutually exclusive.

I said to one of them, "Look after the baby, I've got washing," because we've got washable nappies. I said, "Look after the baby. Entertain her, do some words," because she's saying words, "Do any words." So I came back after I scrapped all the stuff off, and he was going, "Say, ‘Wigan Athletic!’"

“Oh, nobody would ever want to know me in Hollywood. I’m far too puffin-faced for that, too weird-looking. No, I think I’ll probably stick to telly, if telly’ll have me, though I wouldn’t mind doing radio plays as well.”

“I did used to like trampolining, but I’m probably past it, I think. You need to have a really strong pelvic floor to be good at trampolining, and I’ve had three children.”

“Every drama school in the country turned me down, and so I was lucky to study drama at all, even if it was lowly Birmingham University. But even when I came out with my degree, my mother promptly insisted I go straight to secretarial college to have something to fall back on, just in case – which didn’t exactly fill me with confidence.”

"It's interesting to see the dislocation between how people perceive a person visually. Apparently on the radio I'm blonde with a big arse."