Moby Dick - that book is so amazing. I just realized that it starts with two characters meeting in bed that's how my book begins too but I hadn't noticed the parallel before two characters forced to share a bed reluctantly.

'Aladdin' was probably my favorite Disney animation when I was a kid. The animation was great and Robin Williams was unbelievable as the Genie. 'Aladdin' was an amazing adventure and the lead character was a hero for guys which I loved. It wasn't a princess or a girl beating the odds it was a street rat. That seemed really cool to me.

With most British actors it's amazing. I think they start with the character on the outside and work in.

We start 'The Butler' in June and that's incredibly exciting for me because I get to work with the amazing Forest Whitaker again. It's a phenomenal script and a great great role - I play his son. Oprah Winfrey is his wife and my mother. My character is a radical civil rights activist.

I filmed 'Albatross' before I got 'Downton.' It's a coming-of-age movie about this girl who leaps into this family's life like a whirlwind. She's ballsy and brash and wonderful it was such an amazing character to play.

I decided to give acting a serious committed try and soon after I read the script for 'Lovely and Amazing.' The story was beautiful and honest and the characters struggled with the same insecurities many women - including me - face. I didn't think I had a chance in hell of being in the film but I knew I had to go for it.

My size has helped make me an amazing performer too. The cliche of the Funny Fat Friend: I absolutely was that character - I am that character... It's a complicated bag of tools I acquired and I've put them all to work onstage.

As a kid I always loved serialized books. It's the reason why people love 'Harry Potter.' Serialization is amazing. It works in television. It works in film and it works in books. Especially when you're a young kid you get attached to these characters.

For the last 20 years of my life I've had the mantra to do amazing parts with amazing people in amazing projects so I'm attracted to good story writing and character and good people. That's what I'm always searching for and I don't think that's ever going to change.

I didn't need clothes. I was allowed the opportunity to act out moments you don't get the opportunity to experience in your own life let alone as a character in a film. I didn't feel naked.

When I was working on Eye of the Beholder I played a character who is so aloof that my whole lifestyle became very aloof. If someone knocked on my door there was a part of me that went into a rage because I wanted to be isolated and alone.

Highly educated young people are tutored taught and monitored in all aspects of their lives except the most important which is character building. When it comes to this most universities leave them alone.

You have to understand the tone of the movie because if it's supposed to be funny it can be funny violent like the Home Alone stuff but you have to really understand the tone of what you're doing and make the action work for that and for the character.

Happiness must be cultivated. It is like character. It is not a thing to be safely let alone for a moment or it will run to weeds.

I would point out that I'm an actress for a reason! If I were popular in high school I would have considered another career because I wouldn't have been alone in my room making up other characters for myself. I definitely had growing pains. The popular kids didn't want anything to do with the girl who was starting the drama club.

It may however be said that the level of experience to which concepts are inapplicable cannot yield any knowledge of a universal character for concepts alone are capable of being socialized.

It's motive alone which gives character to the actions of men.