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."

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.

If you want to have the right to have that conversation with your agent - "I know you sent it to me, I know you like it, but I just really think it's terrible" - you need to have the full details about script. You don't want to be in that situation where your agent says, "What about after the first 20 pages where it turns into a psychedelic musical?" And you're like "What? I thought it was an action-rom!"

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."

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

I'm incredibly grateful for Sophie Barthes, I'll always be incredibly grateful for her being generous enough to believe in what I thought. And it was just lucky that I met the right person.

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.