Jacob Anderson

As a kid, growing up, as far as I was concerned, I was Luke Skywalker. Any sort of small victory or any adversity I would come up against at school, I was like, 'How would Luke Skywalker deal with this?' Everybody was the Empire; anybody who bullied me at school was the Empire.

I've become really aware since putting out music that some people can't get past the acting thing. But acting was never what I meant to do.

I was a very anxious kid. I was bullied at primary school and responded by making myself as anonymous as possible at secondary school.

Bristol is known for having quite a good success rate of music - Massive Attack and Portishead, that drum and bass, dance music scene. I never listened to that stuff when I was a kid, but my parents did, and my parents knew some of those people.

Music was something I chose that I came to as a kid, and acting was something that was suggested to me.

You can get money, and you can win awards, and you can be on magazines, but that's not going to make you happy.

I don't know who can really relate to being cool. Even people who you think are cool, they are trying to be cool. Nobody can understand the feeling of being cool, really.

I wanted to write or direct more than I wanted to be in front of the camera. I still occasionally feel completely uncomfortable being looked at.

I'm generally a fairly shy, withheld person. But when I get onstage, I get a bit mad.

I want to be rich enough that, without being cruel, I could buy a horse, a white horse, and permanently attach a horn. A pearlescent horn. And then I could just be like, 'Yeah, I have a unicorn.' But I don't know how you do that without being cruel.

A good rapper is an amazing thing to me. It's like a 17th-, 18th-century poet.

Depression and anxiety affect a huge number of us. It's so important that the barriers that keep us from talking, seeking out help, and finding a way to cope when things feel desperate are removed.