Bel Powley

It sounds so negative of me to say, but I don't feel like there were many coming-of-age films when I was growing up. I think that when I was a teenager, I felt really misrepresented in the teenage roles that I was watching onscreen. Especially in women. ”

Diary of a Teenage Girl' was my first American movie. It was my first movie in an American accent. It's based on a graphic novel, which was written in 2002 by someone called Phoebe Gloeckner. It was turned into a play by Marielle Heller, who then wrote it as a screenplay for Sundance Labs. ”

When I was young, there weren't any teenage girls I could relate to in film. They were all put in boxes: the virginal good girl, the really sarcastic asexual one. I wanted to do something that represented how I felt then. ”

I'm so open to different things. The only thing I'd say is I've set the bar pretty high in terms of good female roles with 'Diary,' and I want to continue in that vein. ”

I think that Hollywood misconstrues actresses saying, 'Oh I wanna play a strong female character,' like we all want to play, like, superheroes or something. ”

I want to keep playing strong female roles. I don't mean superheroes, but women who are really alive. ”

So many times, you get sent scripts where it's, like, the token chick, where the woman is just there to serve the man in the film. ”

I used to do a Saturday drama group called Young Blood Theatre Company with school-friends in west London - nothing to do with my mum and dad. A casting director came to pick people out for a new BBC children's series called 'MI High.' She picked me, I auditioned, and I got the job. ”

I had a place to go to university; I was going to study history. I was in New York doing 'Arcadia,' and I suddenly thought, 'It feels a bit weird to go from a New York stage to Manchester University.' It didn't quite feel right. ”

I was quite academic, quite geeky when I was a kid. I was more interested in going to school than I was in becoming a film star or something. ”