The Interview: A Life in Three Acts

We meet in a café that has not changed since the nineties, which is the point. “I came here when I had nothing on,” she says. “It keeps the head still.”

The first act is well documented — the breakout series, the magazine covers, the awards circuit. The second act is not. Four years of auditions that went nowhere and a stretch of work outside the industry entirely.

“People treat a gap like a failure,” she says. “It was the only time I read properly, and everything I have done since came out of that reading.”

The third act is happening now: a production company, two commissions, and a firm policy of never taking a job purely because it is offered.