I was quite a shy child but always loved performing. Most evenings were taken up with some kind of dance class, ballet or tap. I think as a child you come to these art forms in their purest forms. There is a willingness to surrender yourself to their mystery and transformative powers. I think I knew from a young age that there was something profound happening in these quiet evening classrooms after school. For the first time I was able to translate a feeling into my body. I found deep comfort in that.

I was, but I didn’t actually begin modelling until I finished school. It wasn’t something I ever decided to do, it was more of an opportunity that came to me and I happened to enjoy it and make some money to get through university. Looking back, it was a good way to experiment and to understand the dynamics between the camera and self. I was a bit of a quiet rebel growing up. So I think it was a nice way to push these sides out of myself. I liked the danger aspect of opening a new door inside me and revealing it to the world through the glass in the lens.

I was already studying acting and working as an actor before I worked as a model. When I was 16, I auditioned for the RADA Youth Group. I remember it was a bit of a long shot as they only took 20 people from the whole country. It was an incentive to give a year of free education to the chosen few hopeful young actors. I somehow got in and this was the moment that really changed everything. I was suddenly in a room where the mantra was the lost words of Shakespeare and the plays of Lorca. That year changed my life and I will always be grateful for that. It gave me the physical space to live in the lives of these lost worlds.

I am profoundly grateful for every role as I have learnt so much for them all. I think for me it’s when it feels like a 360-degree collaboration. The two films I made with the great Italian director Riccardo Vannuccini have been some of my most rewarding experiences. Our first film, Commedia, was shot in Rome and I play a mental patient – we worked with words, but also a lot with movement. The second film, Things and Other Things, we wrapped in December last year and shot it in Tuscany in the countryside. The film is dedicated to imagination. We filmed it entirely in abandoned buildings – a theme park, schools, hospitals – it’s about when everything is gone and we are forced to imagine. I loved working with an entirely Italian crew also, there is a real joy to the way things get done.

I think it’s important to have fun with it all. I like there to be a twist. Something imperfect and unexpected. Maybe it’s a flower you’ve picked up from the ground on the walk home that you put in your hair…

Helena Bonham Carter, Susie Cave, Gena Rowlands and Pattie Boyd – they all wear their worlds. 

It changes a lot, but for music Camden will always have a special place in my heart. I spent a lot of my teens in the bars and clubs of Camden getting lost in music. I think there is still some ‘magic in the air’ to the place. There is something evolving in those dark rooms above the pubs still today. Music is actually being played and made.

As an actor, it’s important to me to understand both sides of the camera. I often see the process as a continuation rather than two completely different things. The objective is the same: to translate truth, to make the intention live visually.

I have been lucky enough to know Jaclyn for more than a decade. I was in some of her early movies that she made while she was living in LA and had just graduated from AFI. Since then we have become friends and seen each other evolve and grow. Life has happened to us both. I think we were inspired by our story of friendship. We often watch films that are about much older people looking back – we wanted to write a kind of double coming of age movie about the journey between the teenage self and adults in their 30s. This natural transportation we all go through, but through which we still hold the ghost and fantasies of the past inside of us.

I am currently preparing for Jaclyn and I’s next film. This script is a deeply personal story. It’s called All Five Eyes and it’s a portrait of the role of the carer through the eyes of three sisters. I play the older sister, Cecily, who shows her version of love through her strict routine caring for their autistic sister, Willa. And my new poetry book, Who Will Make The Fire, comes out on 20 June.

In the garden or maybe on a train somewhere looking out the window.