“I’d read about people like Rachel Weisz and Thandie Newton going down the Oxbridge route and it inspired me. They were these absolutely beautiful, glamorous, intelligent women who’d gone to a top university and done lots of acting while they were there and I thought, 'Well if I get there, maybe those opportunities will happen for me,’ which was quite a simplistic way of looking at it but, as it turned out, that did sort of happen.”