If you want an honest dialogue, you can't criticize someone for what they say. You can't teach someone to think in a certain way.

If you want an honest dialogue, you can't criticize someone for what they say. You can't teach someone to think in a certain way.

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.

My mum was an actor until she started having children. I was the first child, so in a way I was the end of her acting career, which hopefully she's forgiven me for. She's still watches my show every week. It's funny because I didn't grow up in a household that felt like a theatrical household. My dad did a normal job and my mum had given up. But when I decided to try and do it - it wasn't the most alien concept.

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.

There was still an element in acting, certainly for my dad, of like, "This is lunacy." But then once my parents could tell that I was serious, it was like, "Okay then."