Once you get an agent you're given an opportunity to try a little bit more. It's a really long ladder.

My first professional audition - god, I've never told anybody about this - was for a test commercial, I think it was for Xbox. It involved me getting kidnapped by a granny who wanted to play the Xbox. It was very weird and I definitely had no idea what I was doing. I actually got the gig. It wasn't a commercial; it was what directors did when they wanted to show the company what they would do with a commercial.

There's something great about being a really young actor because you don't have a chance to be nervous. You don't know anything yet. Whereas one of the big challenges as you go through - I've been doing acting professionally for 10 years now - is to not let all the things that you know hold you back and make you more nervous. Once you've had a few people tell you that they don't like your ideas, that voice in your head can creep in that says, "Don't tell them what you think."

I wasn't particularly prolific at sport, and I could get by at school, but I wasn't going to win any prizes. Suddenly people were slapping me on the back and saying that I was funny and talented. So I just knew that it felt good to be appreciated, basically. Whenever I got an opportunity to do some acting I did a little bit more.

I can think of a handful of auditions where the director has literally said, "That is the opposite of what I think." But it's really good to be honest and have that dialogue. I don't think you should be criticized though.

My grandfather told me that I should have a series of headshots, one with a tennis racket, one dressed as a naval officer, and one dressed as a cheeky chappie. He said, "If you have those headshots, the world is your oyster."

I suppose it's really satisfying to play someone with secrets. It's really satisfying to decide how and when those things are going to start being revealed, and how subtle to be.