Page 297 - FINAL_Guildhall Media Highlights 2019-2020 Coverage Book

It’s safe to say no one has succeeded in taking advantage of Michelle, and she says now that when
she first broached the idea of going into acting to her parents they were not in the least bit
concerned.

‘They weren’t alarmed by it at all!’ she laughs. ‘They made sure I had a good education so I had
something to fall back on.

'Both my parents are wonderful. My mum is the most incredible woman, she inspires me.

'And my dad’s amazing too – even though he spent our growing-up years with a bathroom that was

never free! They let me be who I want to be.

'So between them and my two elder sisters, who are still my best friends, I’m very lucky. We call
ourselves the Essex Mafia!’

Her career choice can hardly have come as a surprise to the family, as she says she wanted to be
an actor ever since she can remember.

When she and her sisters were small they attended a stage school in the evening, and they would
put on plays at home to entertain the family.

Michelle apprenticed at the National Youth Theatre when she was a teenager, and as soon as she’d
taken her A-levels she enrolled at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

‘I feel I learned more at drama school than I did anywhere else,’ she says. ‘Even when I was at
regular school I was never out of the drama department, so I didn’t do very well in other subjects.

'I just didn’t want to be taught anything else. But there’s a huge amount you learn in drama school

besides acting, like history and literature, and that was where I came into my own.’

It was, of course, Lady Mary who made Michelle famous. ‘It happened overnight,’ she says.

‘Well, I’d been working in the theatre for seven years, so it wasn’t really overnight, but I remember
after the first episode of Downton Abbey aired, walking into my newsagent’s where I was living and
seeing a picture of myself, Laura Carmichael and Jessica Brown-Findlay, the three Crawley sisters,
on the cover of three papers and that was huge.

'Then the first time I was recognised on the street was in New York, and that was even bigger
because that’s when it hit me how big the show had become if I was being recognised in America.’

With talk of another feature film in the works after last year’s hit Downton movie, she says playing
Mary is as comfortable as slipping into a second skin.

‘I have huge fondness for her, she’s been a big part of my life. That was a very special show, and I

hope it’s one that stays with people forever.’

It was through Downton that she met the man she thought she’d be married to now.