Alicia Vikander

I push myself hard. I don't like pain, exactly, but as a ballerina, I lived in constant pain. At ballet school in Stockholm, I remember we had a locker where if someone had been to the doctor and gotten painkillers, we divided them among us. In a sense, we were all addicted.

It's a mixed feeling when everything you've ever wanted in making films is coming true, and yet you feel scared because it's happening all at once. Suddenly you're in rooms with people you've looked up to for years, the Judi Denches. You wonder if you're good, if you have what it takes.

I vividly remember watching women in films when I was nine or 10, picturing them being what I'd be like as an adult. I had these real female crushes on certain actresses. And I'd watch them, thinking, 'One day, I'll be that. One day I'll be a woman.'