[About her childhood in Hong Kong] "Expat culture is full of very bizarre communities of people,
ever so slightly
Empire of the Sun - nothing's as good as it was in 1936.
There was definitely a feeling of a hangover from the Empire. I
certainly remember that tennis was at four!"
[About her role in Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights] "The filmmakers were obsessed with having someone skinny.
I just thought, why didn't they get someone like Kate Bosworth,
if that's what they wanted? An actress like that wouldn't worry
about whether or not the political ideas were being sensitively or subtly dealt with.
They'd do the job, smile and look pretty on the cover of Teen Vogue. There I am,
135 pounds and trying to make art! I was so wrong for it!"
"Cinema has become incredibly male in its perspective.
Just look at Lord of the Rings - eighteen characters
and two girls who appear on the poster but are only in the film for two minutes!
So it's really hard to find anything that isn't somebody's love interest or the totty."
"About 40 per cent of success as an actor is now based on whether you're good at being
interviewed and how you conduct yourself. And I'm really bad at that."
"I date nothing but older men. I've reached a stage
in my life where I've started to worry whether it's a
fetish or not. What did I find out? I suppose that the only
real effect of ageing is deep cynicism - that, and you are maybe a little more comfortable with yourself."
"I do think the Olympics are a curiously male obsession.
Who can run the fastest from here to here? You know what I think?
Who gives? Because if you're not running to catch a bus or running to buy me a bunch of flowers, I don't care."
"For a long time, I was worried about being typecast. But costume drama is a large part of the work in this country.
It's just a bit sniffy to turn up your nose at it."
"The single biggest surprise about acting is how unsexy the lead actors can be when you work with them."
[On Nicholas Nickleby co-star, Charlie Hunman] "He is a beautiful-looking man, but you are soon
sitting down between scenes, having a cigarette, comparing blisters and talking about your agent."
"I am so clumsy. If there's a chance of dropping something or crashing into something, I do it. How sexy is that?"
[On dancing in Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights] "I had the time of my life. I have used every part of my body, plus muscles I did not know I had,
because the dancing is a combination of salsa and Latin ballroom. It felt like daily aerobics."
"...Hollywood? Well, it's still there, last time I looked."
"If you do a lot of period drama,
those female characters, nine times out of ten, are going to
represent all the good in the world. As a young actress, there's not a lot that
you can do to get away from those roles except try and move within them."
