I think I can adapt quite easily from having a Spanish mother and an English dad and growing up in both places. I feel like I've got two lives - that Spanish life, which was so free, and then I lived in England and went to an all-girls, private school and had to fit in with that. That switching out and becoming someone else, I find it quite liberating, actually.

I think it's unhealthy to listen to what people say. My dad used to always say, "Don't believe in your own hype!" I was confused at the time: "Dad, there is no hype on me." But now I understand what he was saying. If someone says, "I think you're amazing" and someone says, "I think you're awful," I would like to have the same reaction to both, to be confident and calm enough to be able to take both of those and not be affected by either.

I like to see the positive. I went to Madrid when I was 18 and did a TV show there. Really, my first job was in Madrid and I was on my own. I think it teaches you how to be independent and survive on your own and not really need anyone, although I definitely needed help in Madrid. It was kind of a disaster. I ended up living with nuns, but that's a whole other story.

My one piece of advice to anyone trying to do acting - this would just be to keep going. It sounds really basic, but I went to 121 auditions my first year in L.A. That is no exaggeration, because I keep lists - I know it's a little psychotic - of every audition that I have ever been to. I went to 121 auditions and I got none. But who cares?

You'd think that it was really hard for me to turn into North Carolina prostitute, but I didn't think of her like that. I just thought there were a lot of similarities. She loves art and she loves beautiful things, and in that regard, she's a girl, I'm a girl. We love beautiful things, we want adventure, we just want to be loved. She just really wants a family and to be safe. I think everyone wants that. I just came from it from that point of view rather than, "Oh, this girl is so different from me. How on Earth am I going to play her?"

I'm not afraid of doing anything. I have no fear. It's made me pretty confident in that I can have a plane flown over my head or I can go head-to-head with an alligator or with a python, and it's all okay and it's so fun.

I would love to be considered Zen, but I'm not sure that I am. Maybe just with animals and babies and in tough situations.