Reading the script, I had a strong feeling for the character. She has this brassy, cabaret quality, but she wears her heart on her sleeve, and I thought she was one of the most captivating characters I'd ever read.

It's a strange thing, but you get this click in your brain; the wonderful feeling that the entirety of a character is suddenly available and accessible to you.

I've always been a believer in research. It's great to have an instinctual human reaction to a character, too, of course, but it has to be countered with knowledge and understanding.

I loved reading when I was young. I was just completely taken by stories. And I remember taking that into English literature at school and taking that into Shakespeare and finding that opened up a whole world of self-expression to me that I didn't have access to previously.

I feel that I don't have to wait around for good scripts anymore, that I can get things moving more quickly. I can ring up directors I like and say I'm keen to work with them, which is pretty great.

I wanted to be an actor ever since I got on stage for the first time, aged 13. Before that, I thought I might follow in the medical footsteps of my parents: my father was a doctor, my mother a pharmacist.