Now Playing: 'Talk' by Coldplay

I like working alone. When I was little I always preferred to play alone. I like doing things by myself. When there's group work I always ask if I can do it on my own.

I need my space. If the door's shut, I'm in my own world. if I'm working, I don't like being disturbed. If I'm listening to my iPod, I would have thought that having both earphones in would be a universal signal of 'I've zoned out, I love you, but please leave me alone.' I talk to myself, sometimes, and I write constantly. Sometimes I space out, or think very intently on things that you can't always see or touch.

That's not to say that I don't have friends, that I don't want friends and that I can't stand a second of human company. I love talking, and I love people. I've said before that people who enjoy solitude are often more, not less, needy - we need both space and support. Of course I get lonely. Sometimes my heart breaks with loneliness.

But I've learned not to trust other people. Other people are unreliable; they don't always mean what they say or say what they mean, they're not always there when they say they will, they're don't always do what they say they do. And I don't pretend to have much control over many people or their actions. I like the accountability of working on your own. You can take credit for everything. I like being in control, especially of something will negatively impact on my life if it goes wrong.

I think, sometimes, I feel too much - or other people don't feel enough. I love passionately, I hate passionately. Sincerity and integrity is natural for anything that I take seriously. I don't understand indifference; it cripples me. I need an emotional response out people. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, right? I don't understand people who brush things aside easily, who are ashamed of their emotions.

Which is why I don't mind things that would make other people run for the hills. I don't mind passion, anger, lust, emotional outbursts and fits of rage. I can handle it. There's nothing more frightening, to me, than apathy. People who don't care, they frighten me the most. People with no ideas and no opinions are infinitely worse than people with bad ideas and bad opinions.

I feel like we live in a world where we have to hide so much of ourselves. Life is too long, and too complicated. We think we have so much time, we are so scared of what people will think. We've got our priorities mixed up. Is it not more important to fall in love and be loved by a single person who you could trust with your life than to be loved by a fickle and uncaring society that will stab you in the back given half a chance?

I have learned, in my own time, that it takes great courage to be yourself. It is not always easy to go against the flow. But I have also learned that being myself is the only chance I have to be loved for who I am. Actors have to live life out of character occasionally, you know. I have learned that love is unconditional and often irrational, and that it is absurd to worry about the superficial details that will only lead to a superficial kind of love.

You have to love yourself enough to not settle for second best. You have to trust yourself enough to let go, rather than to lose. The only people who are remembered are the good, the bad and the ugly. Nobody remembers the masses, as admirable as conformity and insincerity and paranoia is.