The violent Waif in Game of Thrones, Richard III’s consort in The White Queen – now FAYE MARSAY stars as a provincial nanny discovering bohemian London in Love, Nina, a new BBC1 primetime comedy drama scripted by Nick Hornby

Faye Marsay wears JACKET and TROUSERS, Topshop. SHOES, Pretty Loafers

Should the movement to recruit more working-class talent in the arts be in search of a public face, it has a very willing – and photogenic – one ready to volunteer.

Faye Marsay was educated at her local comprehensive in Middlesbrough, won a bursary to drama school – Bristol Old Vic – and has since graced our screens in a multitude of roles: the nasty Waif in Game of Thrones; a gay activist supporting striking British miners in the Bafta-winning film Pride, and as Anne Neville, Richard III’s wife, in the BBC drama The White Queen.

This week she is playing the title role in Nick Hornby’s TV adaptation of the acclaimed book Love, Nina: Despatches From Family Life opposite Helena Bonham Carter.

Faye is living proof that you don’t need to be privileged to make it as an actor – but she concedes, it can be ‘one hell of a struggle’ if you aren’t.

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BLAZER, Topshop. DRESS, Burberry

‘I feel passionately that the opportunities I have had should be available to everyone,’ she tells me matter-of-factly.

‘I’m from a salt-of-the-earth working-class northern background. My dad’s a steelworker and a firefighter and my mum is a secretary for the NHS.

'My brother was a steelworker, but, unfortunately, they shut down the plant where he worked, so at the moment he’s unemployed, which isn’t great when he has two young children.’

A rising star she may be, and a household name in the making – she’s shortly off to a Game of Thrones dinner in Los Angeles, her first trip to Tinseltown (‘I’m going to hire a car and drive all over, soaking it in’) – but it is clear that Faye, 29, is still salt-of-the-earth herself.

From the age of six, when her parents took her to see a local pantomime, an annual Christmas tradition in the Marsay household, Faye wanted to act.

‘There were no theatre facilities at the comp that I went to, but I did have amazing teachers who never stopped encouraging me.

'I was lucky, too, that back then drama-school fees hadn’t gone up to the crazy levels they’re at now, and I was given a bursary. I had to apply twice, but in the end it worked out.

'Most of the people I know would never be able to afford drama school now.’

JUMPER, Topshop. TROUSERS, Le Kilt. SHOES, Suncoo

This sensitive subject of the privately educated dominating the arts has received much press attention of late, and was a source of teasing, Faye reveals, between herself and handsome Old Etonian actor Dominic West, with whom she starred in Pride in 2014.

‘Dom is so charismatic. I used to take the mick out of him all the time because he is so posh. This was the continuing joke between us, but all in a good spirit, of course,’ she winks.

And I believe it. Although clearly determined, Faye is good-natured with it.

‘I don’t want to take away from those people who went to Eton and have done very well – such as Dom and Damian Lewis – because they’re amazing and they deserve it,’ she continues.

‘But surely there’s got to be a way to get working-class people into the industry, too.

'I’ve made it, and I’m not quite sure how. I’d like to help others to have the chances I’ve had; to be someone who stands up for actors who don’t have the means.

'Maybe I’ll start my own drama school one day, as the ones in existence aren’t going to put their fees down, are they?’

She points out that schools such as Eton teach acting so well that the privately educated are not the ones who need to go to theatre school.

‘If I hadn’t had teachers who encouraged me to apply, and I hadn’t managed to get that bursary, I would not be sitting here talking to you now,’ she says.

Faye would, in that case, most likely still be playing football, her other great passion.

‘Football is my true love. I played with boys until I was 11 and then for a girls’ club in Middlesbrough until I was 16.

'If acting hadn’t panned out, being a footballer was my plan B. We still have a kick-about from time to time, me and some of the other northern girls I know in London.’

She only ever plays for fun now, though.

'I’ve made it, and I’m not quite sure how. I’d like to help others to have the chances I’ve had; to be someone who stands up for actors who don’t have the means,' says Faye

‘I can’t jeopardise my legs and risk injury. I need to preserve myself for acting.’

And, although she’s just a 5ft 2in slip of a thing, the roles that Faye has attracted have been physically demanding: from beating and chasing people as the Waif in Game of Thrones (a spiteful, nameless woman-child who spends most of her time in a black-and-white cloak, pursuing Maisie Williams), to her upcoming role as the spirited Nina in Love, Nina (the true story of a girl from the Midlands who gets a job as a nanny for an artsy family in 1980s North London, based on real letters written by Nina Stibbe to her sister), which required her to walk all over the capital with no shoes on.

‘I was barefoot for six weeks of filming, because one of Nina’s many quirks is that she doesn’t wear shoes, or even socks. Damn her! I had a cold pretty much the whole time.’

This was despite the fact that the sympathetic crew strapped hot-water bottles to Faye’s legs on set, in an attempt to keep her warm.

‘Thankfully, they also swept the streets for me, so I didn’t step on anything nasty,’ she adds.

Fortunately, too, Faye found a mother figure in the form of Helena Bonham Carter, who plays Georgia, the on-screen mum of the two boys Nina looks after.

‘Helena was amazing. She is one of the most meticulous, hardworking, sweet and kind people I have met.

'She took me under her wing and we had a right laugh. I would have to pinch myself that I was sitting across from her but, at the same time, I felt within an hour of us meeting that I had known her for ever.’

Their relationship, Faye says, mirrored the touching one in the book between Nina and her employer, who, despite a clash of cultures, reached a harmonious accommodation, living together in bohemian chaos with a motley crew of eccentric neighbours (one of whom was the actor and playwright Alan Bennett).

‘You see them go through these stages – sisterly at one point, then mother-daughter, then employer-employee – they fall out and make up.

'Off screen, Helly and I were like that, too, though we never argued and she never made me feel like she was the boss.’

Despite the cold feet, Faye adored the experience.

‘Most of my storylines are with Maisie Williams, which is a joy. She is such a talented and special girl,' says Faye who plays the Waif in Game of Thrones

‘It was intense. I was in every scene because the whole story is from Nina’s perspective and seen through the lens of her imagination – this wide-eyed girl from the provinces moving to the epicentre of groovy London.

'It’s very stylised: everything is heightened and the colours are bright to reflect her impressions.

‘It was definitely something I could relate to. I remember arriving in London and thinking, “Whoa! The pace, the different cultures, the speed of everything.”

'I identified with Nina’s spirit, wanting to know things, to meet people, to experience stuff.

'I met Nina a couple of weeks before we started shooting so I could channel her into my performance.

'She has this amazing energy, and that’s what I took away from her; not her movements or her voice, but that energy. I hope I’ve got half of what she has.’

Delving into the atmospheric 1980s was also fun for Faye.

‘I was born in 1986, so it didn’t feel too remote for me. I can still remember enormous tellies with only four channels, shoulder pads and my mother’s perm.’

But the world depicted in Love, Nina – which will be aired in five 30-minute instalments on BBC1 – is a more boho take on that era.

Although they didn’t film at the house where the real story unfolded – in Camden’s Gloucester Crescent, then a scruffy-chic artists’ neighbourhood, now the preserve of the super-wealthy – Faye visited the address to get a feel.

‘The house has had so much remodelling done that it was scarcely recognisable from the higgledy-piggledy one in the book.’

Faye and Helena have remained in close touch since filming wrapped: ‘We text and FaceTime regularly.’

And Faye has even hung out with Helena’s children.

‘I went round recently to play some football with the kids and Nell, her daughter, gave me her coat to hold. She thought I was an actual nanny. It was so sweet. She is the most lovely little girl.’

Working as a nanny is not, for the record, on Faye’s list of aspirations.

‘I’d do it for Helena’s kids, and for my niece and nephew, but that’s it,’ she laughs.

‘I’m quite childish myself still, and I don’t think the responsibility bit is something I would be very good at.’

Faye lives happily in her own modern-day bohemian bedlam in a house in Tooting, South London, with three friends: ‘Two actors who I went to drama school with and my best friend, who’s a dancer.

'We’re all creative. We’ll get someone coming in at 1am from a job and someone who’s not worked for weeks and is baking cakes and going crazy in the corner.

'We get on well and all encourage each other. They’re all proper gym freaks, too, and super healthy, so there are no crisps lying around…just sometimes a sly chocolate wrapper left by me from when I’ve been having a bad day and have needed a cup of tea and some dunking!’

'I do feel like an activist. After making Pride, I was so inspired that I went on a couple of marches to protest against mines being closed in Yorkshire,' said Faye

What about the future?

‘I plan to have children one day and may stick around in London to raise them – if work is still going well – but I trust that my northern values will travel with me wherever I go.’

Her activism is something else that, one imagines, will travel with her.

Playing lesbian activist Steph – who endured homophobic hatred to help the miners in Pride – was another role that felt close to home.

‘Somewhere between Steph and Nina is me,’ she says. ‘There’s a bolshiness that sometimes comes out with me.

'I do feel like an activist. After making Pride, I was so inspired that I went on a couple of marches to protest against mines being closed in Yorkshire.’

Faye’s family were particularly touched by this performance.

‘The film resonated with all of us; with my dad and granddad having worked in the mines, and remembering Margaret Thatcher and that time so well.

'Everyone back home is so proud of me and also amazed as none of our lot has ever been involved in acting. I don’t know where I came from.

'My family are humble: when people compliment them on what I’ve achieved, they just say “thank you” and change the subject.’

Faye’s next activist goal is to head to Greece to help with the refugee crisis.

‘I have an unshakable passion about things being fair – you have to be active and do something.

'These days so much of what goes on is inside the phone. People think, “Oh, I can help if I just click something.” But you need to actually be there.

'I’m on Twitter, but I’m hopeless at it. I’ll post something like, “Here’s a nice tree.” It never really comes off. I’d rather be in the room than on the phone.’

Helping to save the world may have to wait, though, as Faye is still busy filming Game of Thrones, with her character reappearing in the latest series.

‘It’s probably the best job I have ever done,’ she says of the cult fantasy period drama.

‘Most of my storylines are with Maisie Williams, which is a joy. She is such a talented and special girl.’

Faye is also hoping to return to Doctor Who in the future, having had a well-received cameo as dreaming girl Shona McCullough in the 2014 Christmas special.

‘I would love to go back. It was a load of fun.’

She has also said previously that she ‘really fancies’ Peter Capaldi who plays the Doctor, though she is keeping shtoom about her love life.

‘I keep that stuff quiet because it’s my world,’ she explains politely. Watch this space.

Faye also harbours a desire to do something ‘gritty and serious and dark. I’d love to take on a Charlize Theron in Monster type of role, with lots of blood and guts.’ [Theron plays a prostitute who butchers the men who enlist her services.]

Faye has the great advantage of having – quite unusually – the sort of face that looks different in every role, making it entirely plausible that she could go from playing a sweet, naive young nanny to a serial killer were she to get her wish.

‘It’s been very helpful having a face that can adapt like mine does,’ Faye acknowledges.

‘It means I’ve never been typecast and also that I can get on the tube and sit there quietly reading Metro without anyone approaching me, because I bear no resemblance to what they’ve seen on screen.

'And I think that’s the best of both worlds – to get to do what you love, but with no invasion into your life.

'I’m a very lucky girl.’

Love, Nina will start this Friday on BBC1

FAYE’S FAVES

RECENT READS?

I’m more into podcasts, but Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín was amazing.

WATCHING?

There’s so much fantastic TV. Breaking Bad blew my mind. House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, Transparent and Making a Murderer, which I binged on for two days.

ACTRESSES YOU ADMIRE?

Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Julianne Moore and Olivia Colman.

BEAUTY ICONS?

Ellen Page is gorgeous with a beautiful soul and she is a great role model.

STYLE SENSE?

I like to look snappy but mainly hang out in gym clothes. My yoga pants are the most treasured item in my wardrobe.

HEALTH SECRETS?

I eat a high-veg diet with lots of fish, go to the gym as often as I can and start each day with yoga, which is good for the soul.

BEAUTY GO-TO?

When I first started acting, a make-up artist gave me a Dermalogica kit – I’ve never looked back.

YOUR PERFECT DAY?

A meal out with mates, an exhibition, a mooch along London’s Southbank, a gym session, lots of nice food while watching Netflix, followed by a bath with Epsom salts and candles.