Bel Powley quotes:

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.

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 you're portraying someone that really existed, there has to be a time as an actress where you leave reality and move into the fantasy world so you can do your job of creating a character.

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 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.

All my friends were off on gap years, so going to New York alone, at the age of 18, was kind of my flying the nest. It was an amazing experience.

I want to play a range, from victims to strong people, just as long as it's a well-rounded character. And it's not a woman who's just there for the purpose of the man.

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.

I grew up with my parents in the kitchen discussing the audition my dad had that day or moaning about something or other in the industry, so it was unglamourised and normalised for me from a very young age.

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.

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

A lot of the auditions in L.A. do feel like cattle calls, with hundreds of people. I started to lose sight of what I wanted, because you get so desperate for a job that you stop caring whether it's a good script. You're just pleased to be testing for something - but then if you get it, you're doing it for potentially six years, so it's a lottery.

I started doing theatre, and that's when I really fell in love with the profession; I learned a lot. It felt a bit weird to go from living in New York on Broadway to university, so I kept putting it off. Then, eventually, I had to give up the place.