Emily Watson interview: 'It's not that I'm a prude or vain, it's just that I'm way too old to be naked on screen'

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. She plays Dr Yvonne Carmichael, an eminent scientist and a “pathologically law-abiding” wife and mother, who finds herself in the dock of the Old Bailey, in Bafta-winning Amanda Coe's BBC adaptation of Louise Doughty's best-selling novel Apple Tree Yard. open image in gallery Watson as Yvonne Carmichael, who has steamy sex with stranger, Mark Costley, played by Ben Chaplin in BBC's 'Apple Tree Yard' Carmichael is a geneticist and, when we meet her in Coe's adaptation, she is heading to the Houses of Parliament for a routine appearance before a government committee, helping it to pronounce on recommended limitations on cloning technology. Plan auto-renews until cancelled Try for free open image in gallery Watson in Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves in 1996 “I feel that something like this has come at a time in my career when the roles for women of my age in movies and television are smaller and smaller and smaller, and this is about a fully grown-up woman who is powerfully sexual and has a complex life. and it was fun.” Watson mentions being 22, but it was at the age of 28 that the London-born actress, then a virtual unknown outside the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, stepped into the lead role – after Helena Bonham Carter "got cold feet" – in one of the most controversial films of the 1990s, Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves.