Get to know Tamsin Greig

What’s your job?

I’m an actor, which means I play different characters in stories told in the theatre, on screen or on the radio. Basically, I pretend to be other people.

Did you want this job when you were a child, or something else? 

When I was much younger, I wanted to be a ballet dancer. But I grew too tall and couldn’t take the pain in my feet of dancing on pointe. So I found my way to a different sort of performance.

How did you learn to do your job? 

I performed in productions at school, and then went to study Drama and Theatre Arts at Birmingham University. My first professional acting job was with a children’s theatre company in Birmingham. I’ve really been learning to do my job in each production I’ve been involved with. I think we learn best by doing the job.

What is the best thing about it?

Inhabiting another person’s life and story – it really fires the imagination to walk around in someone else’s shoes and see the world from a completely different perspective.

What is the hardest thing about it?

The uncertainty. Not knowing if you’ll ever work again after the end of the last job!

Do you play any instruments? 

I played all the four sizes of recorder at primary school, and tried to learn the piano. But my teacher was quite scary and kept farting, so I stopped.

What was your favourite film or TV show when you were a child?

I loved a cartoon called The Magic Roundabout, and another animation called Mr Benn. When I was a young teenager, I loved the movie Grease with John Travolta which I went to see 5 times in one week.

If you could be a character from any fairy tale, who would it be, and why? 

I think I’d like to inhabit the life of Pinocchio – to experience the difference in real life between being a wooden puppet and then becoming fully alive.

What is your favourite story by Roald Dahl? 

I love Matilda! I love the fact that Roald Dahl chose to make the main character a girl, whose imagination and passion for justice is so strong that she can actually move things with her mind. I think it’s a brilliant story about how we can change things by being passionately focussed.