I always vaguely knew I wanted to perform, but I haven't got the greatest singing voice and my dancing isn't up to scratch. Acting was really the only alternative. My parents have been really supportive throughout.

There's such a huge link with fashion, with front covers of magazines and selling products, but that's not what you go into the job for, and yet you're persuaded that's what you have to do to create the opportunities for yourself.

I've always been quite shy. Very confident but very shy.

There's always been a religious strain in me. I can't get rid of it. I don't want to get rid of it. I'm not involved in a church, but I understand that impulse to believe in something that's never going to betray you.

Leaving Europe in my mind wasn't the best thing; it's not the best way of having that political voice. But that's the only voice people in Britain could have. People turned out in their droves to vote, more than for prime minister. So it was huge and very divisive.

In Britain, we haven't got enough money to make these long-running shows. We always do little mini ones. You have more control as an actor over what you want to do with it. On these you drive yourself mad trying to know what's going to happen, because the writers don't.

Racism, specifically, is the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death.