Leah Coutes can separate her life so far into three distinct chapters. The first is the rather imaginatively titled Childhood - painfully normal, fitting for most humans on the planet, but surprisingly universal too. Despite the overbearing gaze of her British acting elite parents, she likes to think that her childhood experience was a good one. Leah didn't do well at school at all, she spent most of her childhood bossing her younger siblings around, and when childhood gave way to teenagerhood there were more than a few drunken attempts to sneak back into the house at 4am (that were never successful). Childhood was a good chapter. It's when childhood gives way to that pesky thing called the "real world" that shit gets difficult.

The second chapter, then, is called "Thinking Too Much". When she left school at sixteen with few qualifications to her name, the only thing that Leah wanted to do was act, but it was her younger brother, Nathan, who cast that dice first. His casting in Harry Potter was met with sincere congratulations from his eighteen year old sister, but at the same time she was brimming with jealousy. So, she stepped up her game; lost weight, auditioned for everything, lied about skills she had and accents she could do. In 2001 it paid off, with Bend It Like Beckham. (She just had to learn how to play football...) From there, the trying only intensified. It peaked in 2005 with her Oscar nominated turn as Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, then working with Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada, playing a Bond girl (albeit in the worst Bond film), and then... the work didn't dry up, exactly, but Leah did. She got too immersed in the negative parts of the industry, passed on projects she shouldn't have passed on for fear of failing at them - or, conversely, imagining she was somehow too good for. The toll that Thinking Too Much took on her mental health is only something that Leah can recognise in hindsight; at the time it was just how it was. Missing out on some roles she felt she should've been perfect for in 2009, alongside a difficult heart-to-heart with her younger sister, Emily, was the catalyst that she needed to pull herself back from the edge of what could have been a total breakdown of everything. Wrapping her scenes for Made in Dagenham in early 2009, Leah took some time off and decided that overthinking was her problem. The next project that came her way that made her think "oh, this could be fun" was the one she was going to try for. It was a West End musical called Legally Blonde.

The third chapter, the current chapter, is "What I Want". She starred in Legally Blonde for fourteen months and it was a game changer. It was fun and it was kooky; it came with instant gratification nightly; it was working with the same people for over a year and knowing that they loved and cared about her. It was a role that won her an Olivier Award - not that the awards matter, but they certainly don't hurt. When she finally decided to leave in 2011, she went to stay with her brother in Los Angeles for an extended break, and then she started looking to see what was next. There's no real pattern to the projects that Leah has opted to do since 2012, save for the fact that they all fall under the very broad umbrella of what she wants. Be it the insanity of The World's End or the gritty drama of Netflix series Jessica Jones, Leah Coutes finds that this way of working works infinitely better for her. There's an inherent selfishness in finding happiness in this industry - you can't let people push you around or tell you what's best for you - and she spent too many years misunderstanding that.

Now, having left London (for the most part, anyway; she still goes home to watch the odd football game) in favour of New York; having married Tonight Show host Chester Daniels; having worked with a number of brilliant people, Leah has carved out not necessarily a household name for herself but a reputation that she's happy with all the same.