TALULAH RILEY

Yoga is the one L.A. thing I actually like.

I got into physics through pop science and quantum science and ended up being such a quantum groupie.

'St. Trinian's' is probably taking it to the extreme, but in essence it's saying, 'If you be yourself, you can do whatever you want,' and it's sort of a fun message.

I think I was a pretty normal student; I just followed most of my friends.

I was a real daydreamer at school, gazing out of the window and losing myself in imaginary worlds.

As a child, I loved story books and wanted to be in them so desperately and live the stories.

There's a real power in heels and a good dress.

I'm terrified I'm about to die, or that all the people I love are about to die, every second of every day.

The things I wanted to do from a very early age - ie. get married and have children - precluded a lot of guys my own age from wanting to have anything to do with me.

Dark matter is interesting. Basically, the universe is heavier than it should be. There's whole swathes of stuff we can't account for.

I have a checklist of things I'd like to do in movies. One of them is get possessed. Die on a deathbed with a ghostly pallor - that's on my list.

Along with issues like global warming, I think a problem with the world today is population decline.

I used to ride horses when I was younger. Ponies were my life. I miss being fearless.

I would literally do anything for Richard Curtis. Anything.

I went to quite an academic school, and all my friends were going to university, but even before my acting jobs, I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to spend another three years being institutionalised, and I feel that getting out of that system benefited me in quite a few ways.

Acting is an odd lifestyle. You make deep bonds quickly and, though you move on, you go around on a loop and see people again.

I'm not some sort of tormented soul looking for an identity in the roles I take. I became an actress because I just love dressing up and playing.

I have an obsession with mortality. I saw a friend die when I was 18, and I can't get over it.

Men are visual creatures.

My wide eyes make me look much younger without make-up, and although it's fun to have a line in innocence corrupted, I doubt I'll get to play the vampy vixen or a Hedda Gabler or Lady Macbeth.

Initially, I studied philosophy, because it claimed to give you answers to the meaning of existence, but it didn't: It was basically a semantics game.

I grew up in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, and reading was a big part of my life - I'd get through several books a week.

I've been an actress for years, and I've worked with one female director. Statistically it's less than 7% or 12% - I mean, it's low, not representative. So, hopefully, more women will be given opportunities to direct, or create opportunities to direct themselves.

I'm a big reader, so when I was in 'Pride and Prejudice,' or, like, in Poirots and Marples, those are all books that I loved, and so it was really exciting for me to inhabit characters from literature that I knew and recognized.

I'm terribly, horribly shy.