“All I know is Andrew Davies is an amazing writer; I adore the scripts. I think that Jeremy Piven is outstanding.”

“Any aspirational job is tough because everyone wants to do it.”

“As for getting married, I don't have strong feelings, really - I can take or leave it.”

“Awards go up at Mum and Dad's, but home is home, and I don't like to bring the office home.”

“Becoming a mother has turned my world upside down, but in a really good way - it's the best.”

“Don't be fooled. Looks can be deceptive. Like every working mother, I'm paddling away like a duck beneath the water.”

“Even at home, I don't have pictures on the wall of jobs I've done.”

“I agree with my mother that having children removes a layer of skin that you never grow back.”

“I always look so different in different roles, people are never quite sure. Which is the way I like it.”

“I always took 'Coronation Street' a year at a time anyway. It was the 50th anniversary; I'd been there five years. It just felt right to leave.”

“I bought the 'Happy Valley' DVD because Steve Pemberton was in it.”

“I can't imagine soaps will ever stop, because people will always watch as long as they have great stories and characters. But the soaps will have to keep evolving, won't they?”

“I couldn't knock on people's door; if they answered the door and said, 'I don't want to speak to you,' I'd be like, 'Oh, OK then - I wouldn't either, to be honest.'”

“I don't do resolutions, as I am a rebel without a cause in that respect - I always break them by the second of Jan.!”

“I don't really get a buzz from playing characters that are similar to me 'cause that's not acting to me.”

“I don't think, as a journalist, I'd ever get a story written. I'd probably spend five years researching it, and by the time I'd finish it, no one would be interested in it anymore.”

“I enjoy what I'm doing at the moment and try not to think too much about the future.”

“I get weepy even watching the news.”

“I have been listening to people's advice. Being a parent, you need all the advice you can get.”

“I initially went into 'Coronation Street' for three months. If they had said back then, 'Do you want to do it for six years?' I probably would have said, 'I don't think so.'”

“I just take every script as it comes along and take it from there.”

“I know lots of people who work in the U.S. but don't live there.”

“I love going to other people's weddings, but I have never desired a big white wedding for myself, and it has never been put on me as a pressure, an expectation.”

“I miss everyone on 'Coronation Street,' but I don't miss playing Becky.”

“I remember trying to explain the class system to a Canadian friend when we started at RADA. The funniest thing was when I told her what bonfire night is all about. It's quite dark when you start breaking it down.”

“I remember, when I was a teenager, 'Pride And Prejudice' came out. We hadn't had a period drama for ages, and were all glued to it, and for the next three years, Jane Austen series were being made.”

“I take my hat off to working mums and especially single working mums. I honestly don't know how they do it.”

“I take one day at a time. I've always been like that.”

“I used to work at a pub called The Miner's Rest, and the landlord, Dennis, taught me how to pour a proper pint - it's the type of place where the regulars would send their drinks back if they weren't right.”

“I was excited when I first got the call, when I heard BBC Four were making a biography and they were interested in me being a part of it.”

“I would always consider going back to 'Coronation Street.'”

“I wouldn't put myself on the same pedestal as Sarah Lancashire.”

“I'd be a terrible journalist. I wouldn't want to pry; I just don't have that nature.”

“If I had a penny for every time I've been asked if I'm going to work in America.”

“If you drop a line in the theatre, you can usually find a way round it. But you can't do that as easily on television - you're in the hands of too many people.”

“I'm 30; I don't have any commitments, and there are great parts out there that I want to play.”

“I'm a good old Yorkshire girl in that I don't like to talk about things that are on tick. As my nana always said, 'Until you've bought it, it's not yours,' so until it's signed on the dotted line, I don't like to talk about it.”

“I'm a very separate person to my job.”

“I'm always proud to be in something that's good.”

“I'm delighted to join the cast of 'Field Of Blood: The Dead Hour.'”

“I'm quite happy being single.”

“I'm really looking forward to filming in Glasgow with a top-class cast and crew.”

“In the Depression, big musicals made a comeback.”

“It sounds so boring - and my brothers tease, 'Oh poor you, pulling pretend pints all day' - but it's very, very long hours, and you're knackered when you get home.”

“It's been great for me to play a real baddie.”

“It's better to have tried and failed than never tried, you can rest easy knowing you gave it a go.”

“It's hard when something's bigged up because you want people to watch it, so you have to promote it. It'd be great if it was the old-fashioned days when there was no press, and you just switched on and thought, 'Oh, God, what's going on?'”

“It's lovely being in a hit.”

“I've already been married six times in my career as an actress - twice as Becky - so I think a wedding of my own might feel too much like work!”

“I've got a great husband who's very good with Orla - she's a real daddy's girl.”

“I've got a green card, so I can work there any time, but I hate reading about actors going to America, because it's not like that anymore.”

“I've got a really good network that includes friends who all had babies within eight weeks of each other, plus my sister, a lovely part-time nanny and a nursery where Orla goes for half days.”

“I've had a fantastic time at 'Coronation Street,' and I'm chuffed at the reaction to Becky. It's been this lovely redemption story, and I think that's what the viewers have enjoyed about it.”

“I've never been a person to wish for stuff - I just take it as it comes.”

“I've sort of overlapped every job that I've done, really.”

“My mum and dad's hobby was amateur dramatics.”

“My parents are really honest when they watch something. My nan is brutally honest. She'll tell me, 'Oh, you looked awful in that scene,' and I'm like, 'Well, I was giving birth at the time, so it probably worked with the character, Nan.'”

“One of my first memories is running up and down the theatre at Wakefield Opera House.”

“So many people say you have to remember to grab hold of your bride or groom and spend time with them. I think if we had done a traditional wedding, we would have been doing it for everyone else, but this was about the two of us.”

“That's the great thing about 'Corrie': it is an ensemble cast, and it didn't rest on one person's shoulders by any means.”

“The next series of 'Mr Selfridge' has moved on five years. It's 1914 now, and the war is brewing. Halfway through the series, some of the Selfridges staff have to go off to fight, so they get women in to do the men's jobs.”

“The novelty of corsets and dresses and hats very soon wears off.”

“The police who did our training said 'Happy Valley' is one of the only police programmes they can watch and not burst out laughing, saying, 'As if you'd do that.' They think it's really authentic.”

“The RSC changed my career, and 'Coronation Street' changed my life.”

“There are lots of people in my life I just don't get the chance to see as much as I would like.”

“There's no point daydreaming about what you want to play, because there might never be a script with that part in.”

“There's no sort of hierarchy at 'Corrie.' The crew get on.”

“Until I'm actually stood on the set doing the job, I always keep my options open.”

“We have a part-time nanny who does a few afternoons a week. We have a nursery.”

“We take each week as it comes; we're juggling just like everybody else. It's all about spinning plates.”

“What is happening now to me in my career is amazing, so I dwell on the things that are happening rather than the things that aren't, because what's the point? It doesn't make them happen.”

“When I left 'Coronation Street,' I wondered if I could ever be lucky enough to work with such a unanimously wonderful company of good people - and I've just come to that good bunch again.”

“When I read the diary of former 'Daily Mirror' editor Piers Morgan, I realised it was a tough old world to be part of.”

“Whenever there was a show like 'Calamity Jane,' me and my siblings would be plonked on stage in a costume because it was easier to have us in it rather than sort out babysitters.”

“You can't go back to work unless you have a great support network, whatever that is. My mum and dad, sister, and husband are great.”

“You just need a good plan and then a back-up plan!”

“You should see the way I walk around on the way to the nursery. I look a state.”

“You've got to be brave.”