The qualities I am looking for in Miss Right are intelligence and humour.

I took a gamble in becoming an actor and my dream job has been realised.

I had to escape the destruction of my father's bankruptcy and all that difficulty.

I would have loved to have been a footballer like my great uncle Matt Busby, but I knew quite early on that I wasn't going to make the grade. Luckily I was told by the age of 13 that I wasn't good enough. That's not a bad thing. You see this 'X Factor' generation of kids now who don't accept that they're not good enough.

I was always aware of what the language I was using meant in terms of my bond with my parents - how it defined the lines of affection between us. When I spoke English, I felt I wasn't completely their child any more but the child of another language.

To be honest, I know that a lot of Asian parents are secretly shocked and horrified by many aspects of Western parenting.

Coming from a Haitian-American home, I thought it was necessary to give back to the country in which my parents were raised. That is why I believe in Project PlayWorld's efforts to to provide secure playing spaces for the children of Haiti with the Live Civil Playground.

Single parenting is sometimes just a case of sitting around by yourself in mild despair, not knowing what to do.