I fell asleep in a room that had an oil heater and it filled with carbon monoxide and, if it hadn’t been for my husband, Terry, I would have died.

So, when many years later I really was near death as a result of a haemorrhage after a miscarriage, and heard a doctor saying “She’s very near collapse – call the lab and tell him to run” and understood that the “him” was the person fetching the blood they were going to pump into me, I was not in the least alarmed as I dimly wondered if I had the strength left to think some suitable Last Thought, concluded that I hadn’t, and said to myself the words: “Oh well, if I die I die.” I was sure, then, that nothingness was just that.

When I was five and the doctors walked in and said to my mum: “I am not sure if you will be taking him home.”

Falling off what we in Middlesbrough call a “tarzy”, a bungee rope. I was swinging on it, fell and broke my arm.

After I got arrested, my dad, a lawyer, took me to a QC to try to build a case against the FBI. The dejection on his face when it became obvious that we couldn’t was disappointing.

My mum, because she smuggled me into the National Youth Theatre during summer time when my dad didn’t want me to be an actor, and she’s seen everything I’ve done.

At boarding school, I was unable to get the main part in Hamlet, so I put on a production of The Homecoming with my friends. The teachers came to see it and said they didn’t know I had it in me. It felt very good.

In Brooklyn, I was a dishwasher in a sandwich shop.

A snazzy coffee machine that grinds beans and steams milk.