I've never loved a character as much as I do Niska. The way she's been written is so complex, with huge amounts of light and dark. It's a really satisfying challenge to play someone who is superhuman in their intelligence and physical ability but completely naive when it comes to certain aspects of life.

I imagine if you're one of those genius people working on AI, the desire to find out what's possible is presumably the driving factor, but I hope there are just as many people who are thinking about what we actually want. Just because something's possible it doesn't mean it's going to be good to us.

When I was little, I was actually really shy. I really enjoyed doing school plays, but I found the whole thing terrifying. I cried myself to sleep once because I thought my teacher was going to give me the lead role. I never imagined acting was a viable career.

Politics is terrifying, very masculine, and not particularly encouraging to young blonde women - as a career, that is - and it was only when I was working in parliament that I thought to myself, 'Well, this is a tough industry; can an acting career be any more intimidating?' and I applied to drama school.

I attended Florida State University on an academic and leadership scholarship, changed my major from biology to broadcasting, and transferred to the University of South Carolina for my last two years.

I've always been just as interested in making people think as I am in making them feel, and one of the things this scientific process allows me to do is make the audience look differently at dance.

Reading history, one rarely gets the feeling of the true nature of scientific development, in which the element of farce is as great as the element of triumph.

We live in an increasingly technological world where the issues are quite complex and based on some complicated science.