Danielle Macdonald

Growing up, you see movies, and the big person is always the butt of a joke or the funny best friend, or they lose weight, and that's when they become redeemable.

I had agents in Australia; I just never had any auditions. And if you can't audition, then you can't work. I studied there. I did classes there. I learned how to act. Growing up there, I discovered my love for acting, but I just wasn't getting the opportunities to work professionally.

It's just so hard growing up: you go through things, especially acting - I go to a different set every couple of months, and you meet an entirely new group of people that are around you 24/7. It's not an easy situation to go into when you're a shy person.

None of my family is in the industry. But I watched movies like an insane person when I was a child. I used to make my dad stop at the video store every time we drove past it, and you had to drive past the video store to get to our house.

I actually got a visa through a job that fell through, and it allowed me to move out here and start from scratch. There's more opportunity in America for girls like me, I guess.

If you make one person happy, there you go - you did your job.

I have a dartboard in my place, and I play with my friends.

I think everyone kinda feels a little out place sometimes.

I'm very lucky with my family. They've always been very encouraging, and they never thought that anything would hold me back. I'm very fortunate to have had that.

I think, in Australia, it's kind of a crazy thing to say, 'I want to be an actor.' People look at you weirdly. And when I said I was moving to L.A., I remember people saying, 'No, you shouldn't. You'll just come back disappointed.'

Not everybody gets to travel halfway around the world to see a whole different perspective. If we can see that on TV, we'll know that society is bigger than the small world we all live in.

The cool thing about being different in this industry is that you get different roles; you aren't pigeonholed the same way.