Beckinsale: "I'm attracted to playing things that I find difficult, just because it's a journey that is much more interesting."

Beckinsale: "I find a lot of things kind of funny and I often say what's on my mind, and then get nine texts from all my friends going, 'What's the matter with you?' But I haven't ever made a big attempt to have any particular image. And I don't really worry about it. If it's funny, I don't care."

Beckinsale: "I don't have a big career plan. I just like to see how things come out, and I just try to keep going in different directions."

Beckinsale: "When I first started working, I was very aware of the fact that I'd been to university and studied Russian and French and not acting. So when I started working, I'd started working quite young, I felt like it was important to treat myself kind of like an apprentice and do as many different types of things as I could."

Beckinsale: "I was a very difficult child, and the time I spent reading was about the only peace I gave my mother."

Beckinsale: "Books have always helped me make sense of things. With any life experience, you can find someone who has documented it in a poetic way."

Beckinsale: "If I ever have sex with someone I might be able to develop a sense of humor."

Beckinsale: "I try and take lots of vitamins and I don't drink. I do smoke, though, I'd be insufferable if I didn't smoke, you'd have to push me off a balcony I'd be so boring."

Beckinsale: "I think I like playing the bad girl. I like complicated. I like flawed, messed up complicated. It's more interesting."

Beckinsale: "What's considered ideal in Hollywood is completely different than anywhere else in the world. I don't think you can aspire to it, nor can I. Everybody is retouched, stretched, lengthened, slimmed and trimmed. I could look at a picture of myself from the past and think, 'Why don't I look like that now?' It's because I never have!"

Beckinsale: "No one is more enslaved than a slave who doesn't think they're enslaved."

Beckinsale: "Obviously I've had great experiences with people I've worked with on films - I've married half of them! I should come with a warning sign that says, 'Don't worry, I'm not going to try to marry you. I'm done.'"

Beckinsale: "If someone had told me years ago that sharing a sense of humour was so vital to partnerships, I could have avoided a lot of sex!"

Beckinsale: "At Oxford University, I studied languages so I could read the great novels as they were originally written. I took what in the United States would be a double major in Russian and French, but I have to admit that the pressure of getting through so many books spoiled reading for me."

Beckinsale: "I feel like my brain is more geared towards a novel than it is to a movie."

Beckinsale: "I don't really watch all that much television, I have to say, because I'm so intimidated by how many channels there are. I really cannot find my way back to anything. But I'm compulsively addicted to '24.' I love that show."

Beckinsale: "I'm glad I've never been so successful that I couldn't stop doing one thing. I've kind of been able to just kick it along and switch around."

Beckinsale: "I have more pet peeves than anybody: people talking in the movie theater, people eating in the movie theater loudly, people being rude, people making noise when you're supposed to be asleep, like drilling noises outside. I could be here all day."

Beckinsale: "I feel like I flunked at adolescence really badly. I found it really difficult."

Beckinsale: "When I was pregnant, I had the romantic idea that after the baby was born I would not only take up reading in earnest again, but also write a novel while my daughter slept in her Moses basket. Of course, I barely had time to keep up with my magazines until she started sleeping properly."

Beckinsale: "I didn't feel very attractive as a child and actually I wasn't."