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I was an actor for over a year before I ever saw a play.

My father played with Air Supply, Yes, B.B. King and even Sheryl Crow when she first started out, so I've sort of been around the industry for a long time.

I was doing acting work at Fox - bit pieces with Greg Peck in The Gunfighter and things like that - and grew up more or less as a Fox contract player in about two years.

It's not an understatement to say that I owe everything as an actor to 'Merlin.' It was pretty much my first job, and I didn't know what I was doing for many years on it. It wasn't until the third and fourth series - the fourth series especially - that I really found my feet with the character, and as an actress.

Merlin was five years of my life. I enjoyed every year, every day. I had a brilliant time on it. But I'd be lying if I didn't say I wanted to do more.

I was a repertory actor, which meant that I did a play every week. I was a different character every week; for a year, I was doing 40 or 50 characters.

Working with Terry Gilliam was magic - I've been watching his films since I was little.

Over a spell of about three years, I played a series of roles that were, for me, all very different, but most of them came out within a six-month period. They all dealt with a kind of dark territory that in some cases had been mined before in movies.