Anne-Marie Duff webchat – your questions answered on Ken Loach, Lady Macbeth and fighting for equality

Thank you for asking me so many interesting questions, and all the offers of drinks. I'm just so stunned and flattered that anyone would be interested in anything I have to say. PS: come see the play. It's really good.

For me, coming from a non acting family, a non business family, it meant going to drama school. That felt like my only way in, and perhaps it is the easiest way in because training is really important.

That's all I play! That's what they pay me for. I can't really single one out.

I'd love to. I find it a bit scary. I think I'm really funny in my kitchen with my friends. There's a lot of comedy in Oil though - I get to do some funny things. Write me something funny!

When I was with Dawn French in Wild West, I had a scene where I had to do this thing where my dress was accidentally tucked in my knickers. Being the method actor I am, I did it really accurately. Dawn was like: no! And tucked them in massively. I was like, oh sorry, I wanted it to be realistic. She said: when Monica in Friends came out with a turkey on her head, was that funny?

I always try to do the latter, but some nights I'm sitting in row D.

The Badger obviously. It would have Brian May as back up.

It's enabled me to work in Ireland on exciting projects. My first job in Ireland was on an adaptation of A Monk's Women, I've worked in Irish theatre... I've had a double life, which has been pretty awesome.

I honestly don't think so. I don't see how it would, the kind of work that I do. I live here in this planet to have opinions too, so it's important for me to participate, especially for my sisters, for women. I'm fortunate enough to have an incredibly privileged life, I am educated, I have had the opportunity to be educated, I can read whatever books I want, make love to whoever I want, do the job I choose to, I can walk into a polling station and vote. So I see it as my duty to stand up for other women whose lives are not so full of good fortune.

This was my first animation, and I had a great time. It's a real leap of creative faith, but I saw the preliminary sketches and they're beautiful and I'm very excited to see the end result. I've been wanting to do animation for years, actually.

I'm disappointed and shocked, at the lack of vision. It's this lack of celebrating potential, again. She was innovative, what's wrong with that?

I feel like a Londoner. Because I didn't grow up in an English household, my roots are hugely important to me, they define me and they feel and taste and smell like home. Most of my family are in Ireland, my best sister-friend is in Ireland, and it's a huge part of my life. London is where I grew up, I'm proud of our attitude, especially recently in the Brexit vote. I love the melting pot of London. It's just one of the greatest cities in the world - I think we forget what we have. I know it's a tough eight year old boy, sometimes living here. It's combative and expensive. But it's glorious and creative and cool as hell.

I'm so promiscuous musically, I like so many different things... I have just been listening to Nick Cave's Skeleton Tree album, that's my latest inspiration. Anyone who is a total artist inspires me - Patti Smith, Bjork... anyone who commits to unashamed creative energy, and the point of it, and celebrating the necessity of it inspires me. And it's in that Nick Cave album, really clearly. And his capacity to see the beauty in imperfection.

Start writing roles for black and ethnic actors, and then casting them in them. Colour blind casting, as well. What about the UK though? We're losing so many actors to America because we're not casting them in our dramas.

That's like your last meal, isn't it?? It would be at the age of 102, I would play Hedda Gabler, at the Olivier in the National Theatre. Or Queen Lear, copy Glenda Jackson.

Too difficult! It depends on when and where. Hangover, no hangover, summer picnic... and the pork pie!

I started acting in the theatre, so it feels like home. That said, a really good film or TV set is incredibly thrilling. All mediums are defined by how good the yarn is you're telling. I just like working.

For example, when we made Suffragette, we knew that this was an important story. And it galvanised all the crew and cast, and made us want to do the best we could. In the way that a great rehearsal room is a real equaliser, it's not about trailer size or billing, or who's worth more. Because the story is always the star.

I think that television is a hugely powerful medium, and wish that artists like Ken Loach would have exposure on TV. I think I, Daniel Blake is a superb film, but the right people aren't getting to see it. Arthouse cinemas have a nice woolly liberal audience; Cathy Come Home was so powerful because everybody saw it.

I guess it would have to be the thing that you couldn't live without. Stanislavski says you should love the art in yourself, rather that yourself in the art - it's about the process of acting, not what it might be for you. Just loving acting in a room for five people, that has to be the thing for me. It's not about being a big star, because you'll only be disappointed.

Lady Macbeth? We'll see... I never say which roles I'd like to play. I'm a very superstitious actor.

As soon as you start investigating any historical characters, you are very quickly forced to demolish any notion of "the olden days", and preconceptions that you have. Because human beings were all seasons and all things 150 years ago just as they are now. I was surprised at the level of participation of working class women in the suffrage movement, that they would find the time and the energy to be connected to it, because we all have a notion of bluestocking, upper-middle-class suffragettes who made it a sort of hobby, I suppose, who had time to do it rather than it be a life or death scenario. The working class women were cannon fodder, really.