Irish star Nicola Coughlan has spoken some of the sacrifices she had to make during her early days as a struggling actress.
She also gave an insight into her life as a famous person and gave a typically hilarious analogy.
Coughlan is now one of the most recognisable stars on our screens, thanks to a number of hot roles such as Clare Devlin in the sitcom Derry Girls and Penelope Featherington in the period drama Bridgerton.
However, before she found success, her life wasn’t always so comfortable and she had to make plenty of sacrifices while filming her breakthrough role on Derry Girls.
She told Elle UK: “Whenever people say they want to get into this industry, I’m like, you’ve got to want it so badly. Because if you don’t, you’d be mad to do it, absolutely mad.
“I barely saw my family last year because of filming. There’s a lot of sacrifices to be made. In my twenties, I never went on holiday. I was so broke.”
If Coughlan’s success in Derry Girls was a great reward for her years of hard work and sacrifice, she was about to top it with her next follow-up project.
Bridgerton has been a runaway hit on the streaming giant Netflix and has been watched by tens of millions of people around the world.
Coughlan said: “I was like, ‘OK, great. People are watching’. And then it was like, ‘It’s number one in Turkey. It’s number one in Canada. Number one in the US’.
“I started compiling a list just to try to make it real in my head. And then it was like, ‘It’s the biggest show that’s ever been on Netflix, 80 million people’, and it’s like, ‘What?’ It just was surreal.”
She also spoke about how people treat her when they recognise her in the street.
She said: “Being famous is like being a dog on the Tube. It’s exactly the same energy.
“When you get on, everyone looks at you. Some people are so smiley, while some are afraid of you and don’t want to go near. Some people touch you without asking.”
Take a look at the trailer for Bridgerton Season Two.
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Written by Michael Kehoe @michaelcalling
