Zawe Ashton

I don't tend to go into any job thinking about the audience reaction.

If people call my book an actor's memoir I will be very upset. I can't bear anything too literal, so it has elements of truth and elements of fiction sitting side by side.

I actually grew up around the corner from where Harold Pinter did. If you want a snapshot of my childhood, me and Pinter, we essentially grew up together.

I'm training in martial arts. It's a whole new world for me and I'm loving it. I do that or hot yoga; I have to do some kind of exercise.

Anyone who's been an usher knows it's a training in resilience. But you get such a film education. And the popcorn's free.

Todd Solondz is a film maker I've always loved because of how he balances darkness, humour and surrealism in his films.

My dad constantly tells me I should calm down, but I feel so sad when I see places I've known since I was a child closing. I burst out crying when a local pharmacy closed the other day; it's just going to become a shop that nobody has much of a need for. But I am trying to move with the times.

It has taken a long time for me to really dress as the artist that I am: I'm an indie girl, I like experimental, I like things to be subverted. Details are the fun part.

Secondary school was a lot harder. That was probably my hardest time. Some of the girls were really nasty. I had to move schools because of the bullying there.

The chasm between independent film and commercial film is now so wide. You either have to be super-famous and get a first-time director or writer's indie script off the ground, or you're a newcomer and go and put a cape on for four years.

What sometimes annoys me about the arts is increasingly that we have to put real people on screen or stage.

I'm not really sure what defines 'success in the real world' to be honest! It's so objective once you graduate, some people work, some people start families, some go looking for themselves up mountains in Peru.