Billy Howle

I don't aspire to be a sex icon, I don't know why anyone would. It's an uncomfortable position to put yourself in... it's something that we all haven't really made our minds up about, and that's why we find it all so interesting.

If I could bring 'The Tunnel' to life, I'd like to do it like that.

Pixar make kids' movies, but there are jokes in there for adults, and it never gets too sentimental.

There's a children's book by Anthony Browne called 'The Tunnel' that I've always loved.

A lot of my friends have told me to read 'Tao Te Ching' - a classic Chinese text on the fundamentals of Taoism.

My mum is a theatrical person. I saw a tape of a theatre project she did when I was a kid. I was really affected by the idea that my mum could turn herself into someone else for the purpose of telling a story.

My parents aren't really conformists.

I wanted to go so I could learn the rules and conventions in order to break them later on.

One of my favourite games as a child was to dress up and improvise. Acting seemed obvious.

It's nice sometimes to feel a bit more debonair.

Depression is something I've lived with since I was a teenager.

That is what Christmas should be about, I think - togetherness and playfulness. It's like a game.

Lena Dunham is a hero of mine.

I think if you stop learning, there's not much point, and so I always hope to be challenged. That's the beauty of this job.

My maternal grandmother would sit, before binge-watching existed, and watch 'Poirot' until the cows came home. You couldn't pull her away from it.

For me, I tend to enjoy wearing any period costume. I love how fashion and clothing has changed and evolved through time.

Everyone thinks of the roaring twenties and associates it with decadence and flappers, female sexual liberation, the freedom of women to express themselves, the beginning of feminism. But it was also a time of huge, huge change.

I had that extroverted energy, and I always involved myself in quite adult conversations. My mum never hid us from that. There was never a kids' table; we were never treated as kids, per se, because I don't think she believes in that.

The true art is being able to take whatever the writer's done, and if it is a bit flimsy or it is a bit rushed or is just box-ticking writing, then the true artist would be able to make that come off the page and sing for an audience or a viewer. I'm still learning how to do that properly.

I feel like I'm a professional storyteller, really. A lot of people say 'a truth teller,' and, if the writing supports it, that's what your aim is: to try and present people with a series of truths, and then they can make up their mind about those and whether they have any real credence or weight.

I tried to go to college in the U.K. a couple of times, but at that point, I think I was a little disillusioned with education. It wasn't giving me what I wanted it to. I needed freedom to create and do the things that I wanted to explore, and it wasn't really doing that: it was still very prescriptive.