Emma Thompson has revealed how she does the vacuuming and yoga while she's writing screenplays.

The Oscar-winning screenwriter gave an insight into her writing process at the Bafta Screenwriters' Lecture at the BFI Southbank in London, acting out part of her process to the audience in denim dungarees and a thick coat, reported Deadline.

"That's how I write. I've got a purple yoga mat, and I have a little table about that size. That's sort of what it looks like," she said.

"I hoover; I find odd places to polish. Places that I haven't seen in a long time; sometimes parts of my own body. And there's a lot of crying in fetal positions."

Emma also revealed that Clint Eastwood is her hero and recalled when they both hit the Oscars trail in 1993. She won an award for her work in Howards End, while he received his gong for Unforgiven.

"He was divine to me and my mum," she recalled. "The night we won he said to me, 'Well, we did it'. I said: 'weeee!?' It was so moving. It was like being knighted."

The Nanny McPhee star also said she "was very much influenced by" Westerns because she "grew up on them", adding: "I worked out that Nanny McPhee is a Western."

The 55-year-old actress discussed 1988's Thompson, the ill-fated BBC sketch comedy show which she wrote and starred in.

"It was the most important thing I ever did, because it was such a massive failure," she admitted.

"There were all sorts of reasons for its failure... It was a violent experience and after that I never wrote another sketch. That's really tragic, actually, because I really wanted to be Lily Tomlin. I wanted to be Jane Wagner."