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If I go anywhere where there are people who vaguely look like me, there is always that feeling of, 'Actually I do look quite similar to everyone else.' At moments like that, I become very, very British. My accent gets more clipped, and I stride around as if I've got an empire.

I learned to change my accent; in England, your accent identifies you very strongly with a class, and I did not want to be held back.

A lot of people don't think I'm English. I've lived in France, and people do think I'm French, but I don't see myself as having a glamorous look.

People have lots of misconceptions about me. My mum, who is half French and half Spanish, gets outraged when I'm called quintessentially English. I owe my looks to my mum-which was 90 percent of getting my first job. And, some people would argue, 90 percent of my entire career.

When I was growing up, I felt like I had to qualify it and say I'm British-Pakistani. But now I kind of feel like, in this day in age, this is what British looks like. It looks like me; it looks like Idris Elba, and hopefully through Nasir Khan, people will see that that's what an American can look like as well.

My dad used to say to me, 'You look more like me than I do.'

Everyone thinks they went to high school with me. I take it as a compliment that I look different in every role.

People say to me, 'Do you know who you look like?' And I say, 'I'm really tired of looking like that guy.'

When I was, like, 10, I decided it would look really cool, so I pretended I was British. And I've been doing that ever since.

I'm not the least bit polished, I come from a blue collar background and I never thought I could feel comfortable around the English.