I didn't want to be the girl in the group that couldn't do as much as the boys. I'm very competitive like that.

My mum has told me that I have to work with Antonio Banderas just so that she can meet him and try and marry him.

When I first started out, it was very, very difficult to even get in the room with directors or casting directors because they would see that I hadn't been to drama school and wouldn't want to see me. Now, I feel like it's changing. We have this new generation of a lot of writers, directors and actors who are just breaking through, and they're doing it for the passion.

I try to treat every job with the exact same level of respect. When I go into it, it doesn't matter what the budget is or who the lead actor is. You should have the same focus and the same drive, and you should have as much empathy for your character and understanding of them as you would, no matter what.

I'm finding a lot of actors my age now who are a bit more like me, and not as posh or brought up in a certain way. There's now people of all sorts of kinds of backgrounds.

It's great to have people to bounce off and I love working with people my age. I think young actors have such energy about them and such a passion and a drive to do their best and prove themselves constantly, and to work with that is really fun and interesting.

I've just made a cancer drama, called 'Now Is Good,' directed by Ol Parker and starring Dakota Fanning. We filmed in Brighton and it's about a girl dying of leukemia, although it's not as depressing as it sounds.