SAMANTHA MORTON

I'll never get a part in a huge action blockbuster.

To be honest with you, a lot of directors can be very lazy.

I like to stretch my acting muscles.

Some directors cast you because they trust you to do the performance - but then they forget to direct you.

I don't get the point in a lot of biopics, they're boring. You know what's gonna happen. You're just watching actors show off.

My family don't watch a lot of what I do. Films are a bit too arty-farty for them, certainly the ones I do!

It's like I understand images and some people understand poetry.

You get very possessive about characters, you feel you can see it in your mind and you want to play it.

It's more important for me to feel content than to be famous.

People often ask me, was it hard to play this person or that person? Well, no, not really. Acting is what I do. It's my job.

My mind boggles at the amount of violence inflicted upon children in today's society.

I want to prove that you don't have to come from Oxford University or Rada - and you don't have to have parents that support you - to succeed.

I respond very well to well-written material and women who have had an effect on society, something tragic or monumental has happened to them.

I think anybody who has been abused as a kid - and I was abused as a kid, by various people - will say it's irrational because violence is irrational.

It's fantastic to strive towards a nice life where you eat nice organic food and your children go to a nice school and you can afford nice clothes and nice perfume and the hypoallergenic make-up. But there's never a day goes by, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, that I don't think about where I'm from.

I'm not a writer. I think I can write short stories and poetry, but film writing, brilliant film writing, is a talent - you can't just do it like that.

We're all living blinkered lives, and we're not seeing what's going on and looking to change it. I'm not saying that everyone has to make a political statement, but we need to be more aware of what's happening and why.

What shocks me is that so many people leave care and become homeless, and when you're homeless you get into crime, prostitution and drugs, and it is a vicious circle. That's what we need to change.

I think once you're a mother to one, you're a mother to them all.

Catholicism played such a huge part in my life, I would not have survived without my faith.

When you've been raised in care, rap music isn't just about guns and sexism. They're talking about real things you can hang on to, problems of identity that you have sympathy with. It's not just about the music, with rap: when I was in care, it meant a whole lot more than that.

For anyone who's been in care, successfully coming through the system is nothing to with money or success; it's the ability to feel love and be loved in return.

I think there's a very fine line between the type of performing that some actors do, and being in a state in your mind where you actually believe what's going on. If we weren't actors, what would we do with that ability? Would we not be slightly insane? Mentally ill? I don't know.

I wanted to make a film - and I've been wanting to do this for 16 years - about life in care, and bring it to the public's attention, because I had never seen anything, on TV or in the cinema, which said: 'This is how it feels to be a kid in care'.

I was angry but not at God. I feel that you are closer to God when you are messed up. Definitely. That's when you most need God, and God cannot control what man does.