At school, I got my head stuck in a balustrade on the stairs at lunchtime. I had pupils laughing at me, parents laughing at me, teachers laughing at me and eventually, at the end of the day, the fire brigade laughing at me.

When I was 19 I worked at a gay bar while I was at drama school in London. One of the guys I worked with was Glaswegian and I learned the dialect from him. The acting teacher at the school said, “Liev, you’ve got the region but you’ve missed the character entirely” because I played Jimmy Boyle in a very camp Glaswegian accent.

Years ago, I was trying to get with one of the big agencies and I cobbled together a VHS tape of me in adverts and sobbing in The Bill, and took it United Agents for the attention of Dallas Smith. A week later I went back and said, “Has she looked at the tape?” And they were, like, “Dallas is a he, no he hasn’t and he doesn’t want to,” and handed it back to me.

On radio, I once said “anal” instead of “angel”.

A sense of optimism.

I can’t deal with any level of stress.

I’d probably take out a lot of my 20s, when I was rude, annoying and a brat.

Realising I was never going to make it big in professional swing dance.

Hey Ya, by OutKast.

I’ve done some acting jobs where everybody’s gone out of their way to make sure that you feel annoying and easily replaceable.