00:00Don't compare yourself to others. Use your own voice, because it is your own voice that will
00:05always be the one thing that you can go back to. Don't be judgmental, just stick to your truth
00:12and go for it.
00:19I was born in 1975 and I'm a Libra. I was born in October and I was born in a town called
00:27Reading. My mother hated exams. She hated that we would revise for exams. She hated homework.
00:37She hated anything that kept us indoors. She wanted us to be outside, climbing trees,
00:44digging for worms, having adventures, cooking, enjoying life, swimming in the rivers, swimming
00:49in the sea. She would say, oh I think it's wrong, I think it's so wrong, all these exams,
00:54it's so stressful. And I tell my children now that this is what their grandmother would say.
01:01I just felt I had freedom to follow my dreams and follow my chosen path and to enjoy my life
01:09and not to be stressed. I was always the first in the sea, in the freezing cold English sea,
01:15in the winter. I was always the first in the sea. I loved food. I was always writing stories.
01:24Always making up characters. I was always singing. I was happy in my own skin. I really remember that.
01:33And yeah, a bit of a tomboy, I think. And I was one of four children and so there was just
01:39not the money to take all four of us children to go and see a movie. So when I was a teenager,
01:46the only actress I can honestly say that I was inspired by was Jodie Foster.
01:58Luckily for you, I remember everything very clearly. So an anecdote was that I read
02:07with Matthew McConaughey. He read for Jack, so we auditioned together. That was such a crazy
02:14experience. He was lovely. I remember him being really nice and really funny.
02:21And what else can I tell you? I was so nervous. I was really incredibly nervous.
02:29And also, I didn't think I was going to get the part. I thought, oh, there's no way. I'm English.
02:35There's no way. I remember thinking, oh, they'll cast like Winona Ryder or Uma Thurman.
02:40Why would they cast me? So yeah, I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it when I got that part.
02:51I loved everything about that character, how she looked, how she moved, how she spoke.
02:56It was just so much fun. So yeah, I'd love to revisit that role. Can't you just imagine how
03:04crazy an older Clementine would be? I'm so intrigued to know what happened to her,
03:13what happened in her life. And did she stay that kind of crazy and angry and eccentric? Did she
03:22stay that way? Or I don't know, did she become more sort of neutral and plain? But I hope that
03:30she was still like coloring her hair a bit and wearing all those wonderful clothes. It would
03:36be so amazing to know what happened to her as she got older. I was nearly sick. I nearly threw up.
03:48I nearly threw up. And I remember thinking, oh, my God, I can't speak. My mouth went,
03:55my throat went completely dry. I was like... I mean, it's the stuff of dreams, you know,
04:03for a young actor. I mean, I had dreamed about going to the Academy Awards one day. It was a
04:13dream to stand on that stage and to hold that thing. That was a fantasy for me. And so when
04:21it really happened, I mean, I feel like I'm one of the few people in the world who gets to
04:29actually have a dream come true. And it was a dream come true.
04:38It was very important to me to make her extremely real as a woman in her 40s who
04:48has suffered terrible grief. I knew that that would be a woman who would just
04:52need to look absolutely exhausted and have such enormous sort of emotional range within her.
05:04So I am just so happy that people have connected with the character in the way that they have,
05:14because I really tried to create a woman who was so real that audiences should feel like they
05:21might know her or meet her or, you know, she's so similar to so many people that I know.
05:29So I wanted her to represent, I think, validation for so many of us. It was just very important to
05:36me that those two faces were the same, the face on the poster and the face in the show.
05:41It has to be the same person. And it's difficult for people, I think, to wrap their heads around,
05:46you know, the people who work on the digital side, the creative side and the marketing side of
05:53a television show or a film. You know, they're so used to making actors and actresses look their
05:59best. And I was like, no, no, no, we need to make me look my worst. Don't forget. And they're like,
06:07oh, and they were, you know, have so happy to do it. But it was really interesting how
06:12we kept having to, like, remind people, like, no, no, she's meant to look bad. It's OK.
06:21I felt a real sense of their heritage and where they came from.
06:25And so many of the stories were very personal, clearly very personal to them.
06:29And that I felt was powerful and brave and tremendously exciting because that's what we
06:37want. That's how women connect by sharing stories of other women. That's what we want to hear.
06:43That's how we will always be united. And that is that is, I think, the way of the future.
06:48I think it's shifting. I mean, I feel a younger generation of women, as you talk about that
06:54younger audience, they're just learning to use their voices in a much more spontaneous way
07:00without any degree of hesitation or fear or judgment. That's changing. And I think the
07:10more that we see of that, the more we have celebrations like this one with Lights on Women,
07:15the more we're walking in the right direction and hopefully towards a much more equal film industry.
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