Elizabeth Alton webchat – your questions answered on Love Actually, Neil Patrick Harris and Marmite

I've never put those two together before, but that's quite observant! While I don't consider myself 'Method' as such I do feel that acting, for me, is about taking all of my life experience and using that to find a way to understand somebody new, and I believe it's always possible – and in that respect, all of the characters I've played before, all the women I've been, they all contribute to understanding the one who comes next, even though I try to avoid doing the same thing twice, or hewing too closely to something I've already done. Having done Hedda now for three months I actually have found a bit of Lucille Sharpe in her, a certain unacknowledged desperation that I think they share.

No! God no. We were both so green, and a bit overwhelmed, and never in a million years could've guessed we'd both still be working as much as we are now. Hoped, maybe, but not known. But it was wonderful, he's completely lovely and even 13 years (!!) later I'm still in awe of what he did in that production. Shakespeare's never easy, not least when you're practically a child playing one of his most iconic roles. I should say, Al Weaver was wonderful as well, he did Mondays and matinees for Ben and was just great.

Kevin Spacey also likes to remind everybody on set that he 'discovered' me. Sure, Kevin...

In moderation, love it.

Amazing. I've learned so much from him, it's been a wonderful experience. We didn't have much time to pull everything together, we had only three weeks of rehearsals, off book and in costume from day one, and leading up to it I was really terrified, because Hedda's so complex and I didn't know if I had it in me to pull that off with so little preparation. But it was really suited to Ivo, he doesn't psychologise and doesn't think too much, he's all about the characters expressing themselves physically and spontaneously – for example, "you're now going to smash up all the flowers on stage and staple them to the walls". And that's been really liberating for me, and made it less scary to tackle something so big in so short a time.

I love John Oliver, I would love for him to ask me to do one of his pre-taped bits.

I'm also a really big Monty Python fan, working with any of the remaining Pythons would be brilliant. And I love the Christopher Guest mockumentaries, I don't know that I'd be any good at it but I'd love to try one of those.

Not superior, just different – apples and oranges. They tend to favour high-concept, and will throw the necessary money at it to give it an honest try, which is why they end up with such a surplus of amazing haute television that's playing on a higher level on average, but I don't think it's across the board 'superior' creatively or in execution.

Accents are well hard! I think Matthew Rhys said 50% of acting is thinking about your accent all the time. And that's the sort of thing that makes me understand why people will go Method, because it's probably easier to really get a handle on an accent or dialect if you're using it all the time, on set and off. I'm not that way, but I'm not really a parrot either, some people like to just hear the lines and repeat in order to learn it, but I like to study it and listen to it and figure out what my version of that is. For example, I've just done a film where I play someone German and have to speak it as well, and my German's not great but I tried to listen to native speakers speaking both English and German and figure out the tone and the cadence and learn it all together, so I got a sense of the nuance of it rather than just repeating the lines in another language and trying to echo the right accent while doing it.

Ginger! I'm stupid patriotic, she sold me with the damn Union Jack dress.

Realistically, I probably would've ended up an academic like my mum. But I also think I'd enjoy being some level of professional in the fitness business.