Biography

[on 9 Songs (2004)] I wanted to make a film about something I really believe in, which is to show sex in a very positive light, as a very important piece of everyday life and a very important piece of a relationship, whether it's successful or unsuccessful. What I find in films I see is that sex is always a turning point in action, someone's cheating on someone, or someone dies. It's always the kids having sex in horror films that die. And I didn't like that. And in the sexually explicit films I've seen like In the Realm of the Senses (1976) [the Japanese classic in which the heroine cuts off her partner's penis], they're crazy, people don't do that, it's not normal!

People ask me if I felt that Michael Winterbottom took advantage of me because I hadn't acted before, but they forget that I developed the character. I am not at all like Lisa, and I was genuinely shocked by the reaction to the film and, particularly, to my role in it.

I had to go to church at least twice a week. We were told sex was bad and sex was wrong, and if you had sex outside marriage you'd die and stuff. I found it all very depressing.

People were really angry with me. When I did press conferences people would shout abuse at me. You'd think I invented sex! I got told I was a whore and a slut and how could I do it. And what kind of role model did I think I was giving young women?

When you have been brought up as a religious person, when it has been part of your everyday life, you feel lost without it. It's as though I couldn't continue without religion in my life.