Quotes from Bel Powley

I always wear lip balm because I wear a lot of lipstick. I'm a big lipstick person. I would rather wear too-bright lipstick than too-heavy eye makeup.

I've been star-struck once. I'm a strong believer that everyone's just a person. Whether you've seen someone on screen do something amazing or they're super famous or whatever, everyone's just a person, and they do exactly what all people do.

I hope to teach people that it's fine to make mistakes because they will learn from them, to be who they are, and to learn to love their bodies.

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.

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.

My dad's an actor, and my mum's a casting director and a writer.

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

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 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.

I was really quite geeky at school. At one point, I wanted to be prime minister or a mathematician.

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.

'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.

The movies I used to watch, I remember always being so angry because I felt like I, as a teenage girl, was never truly represented in a film. There were always bits of me that were represented - I'd watch 'Juno' and be like, 'Oh, well part of me is like that, but it's still not the whole thing.'

When I was young, there weren't any teenage girls I could relate to in film. They were all put in boxes: the virginal good girl, the really sarcastic asexual one. I wanted to do something that represented how I felt then.

When you're a teenager, your essence is so specific to being a teenager, and everything becomes so extreme. Your emotions are on the surface, and you oscillate between different things at one time.

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.

Movies make teenagers have quippy answers for every question. Nothing seems to faze them, and they're like, 'Oh, whatever.' You're not like that when you're a teenager. You're really earnest. Things really feel like life or death. And you kind of oscillate between emotions at one time. It's very emotionally draining being a teenager.

I feel like all teenagers can relate to that feeling of being, like, so highly strung, and everything is so on the surface, and everything is so extreme.

My first professional audition as an actor was when I was about 12 years old, and it was for a children's television show called 'M.I. High,' which I ended up doing for two years.

I've set the bar high in terms of having a very feminist attitude towards how I present my body.

I think people get confused: people think 'strong female characters' mean you need to play an action figure.

Most of my really strong friendships are with people I've known all my life.

I actually fall asleep really easily. I'm a bit of a scaredy-cat, though, I have to make sure that all the doors are closed, the front door is locked three times, and then make sure everything is covered and look under the bed.

Playing weird and quirky characters, like those with weird nuances, I find very interesting.