If you play men, in a way it's easier. You can have a voicebox, you can have false hair, mustaches, wigs, you can have all kinds of stuff. But when you're playing women playing men, you only really have yourself to work with, plus tiny little extras.

Yes, I was slightly outside everything when I was growing up. My mother jokes that I was exchanged at birth. She brought us up to have traditional values. She was absolutely not part of the '60s generation.

My mother and father are still together after forty something years. I lived in one place till I was 6. I lived in another place from when I was 6 till I was 17.

But then I got a job selling coffee at the York Theatre, and when I met theatre people, something clicked. I felt comfortable with them; I felt like myself. I decided to go to drama school based just on that feeling. I had never done any acting.

I did 'Tumbleweeds' for fun. I did it because I loved it and I hardly even got paid.

New Yorkers are either the nicest or the rudest.

When youre a young English person who wants to be an actress and you have dreams, you dream of being Vanessa Redgrave or Judi Dench.