Kimberley Nixon says she learned a lot from working with Dame Judi Dench on Cranford, including how to wile away the time when bad weather delays filming on location.

“We’d have to sit under a little tent waiting for it to stop raining, and Judi has so many games in her bag of tricks,” says the 20-year-old, who trained at the Royal Welsh College of<!–more–> Music and Drama.

“She taught us one where you take a piece of newspaper and you’re given a shape, such as a car, and rip away to make that shape. Eileen Atkins is really bad at it – if we said to make a car she would make a boat!”

Kimberley says: “A lot of my background is in theatre, so when you’re on location and the wind is really blowing, it’s raining and you’ve got mud all over you, it really keeps you on your toes.”

Actress and character are the same age, but Sophy’s adolescence was cruelly curtailed by the death of her mother six years earlier.

“She’s basically brought up her three younger siblings and is more or less the mistress of the house,” explains Kimberley.

“Sophy is intelligent and bright, and I think people like her because she is very genuine. She doesn’t entirely wear her heart on her sleeve, but she’s a very honest person with a lot of responsibility on her shoulders.

“When Dr Harrison arrives, he is someone she can talk to about things other than housework, children or dresses. From their first meeting, she feels an affinity with him, but their relationship is very up and down.

“Just when you think it is going in a certain direction, something comes along and swings it off on another course. It’s very exciting for the audience, but at times I don’t think poor Sophy can take much more.”

Perhaps it’s just as well that Kimberley’s next project – the movie Wild Child, starring among others Natasha Richardson and Aidan Quinn, and due for release in 2008 – is a slightly more light-hearted affair.

“I’m playing a schoolgirl, and it’s all girly mischief, which is really fun,” she says. “To flip between the two things is really great for me.”

Kimberley Nixon’s talent, charisma and delicate beauty have seen her segue straight from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama into the BBC’s prestige period drama series The Cranford Chronicles alongside A-listers including Judi Dench, Imelda Staunton and Michael Gambon. That production – about a rural Cheshire town on the cusp of change – wrapped earlier this month and Nixon has moved straight on to Working Title’s boarding school comedy Wild Child, in which she co-stars as the spiky tormentor-in-chief of a spoilt US newcomer, played by Emma Roberts.

It is the first big screen role for Nixon, a self-confessed film buff, whose tastes run to “films which rely on the screenplay and acting rather than the money”. And was she given any tips from the veterans on The Cranford Chronicles? “Eileen Atkins told me the best piece of advice she got was from Alec Guinness – to set three alarm clocks.”

Contact: Ken McReddie Associates, (44) 20 7439 1456

Screen Daily | UK Stars Of Tomorrow 2007

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Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama acting graduate Kimberley Nixon, from Pontypridd, has been snapped up by Universal studios to appear in new feature film Wild Child.

The boarding school comedy, which tells the story of a rebellious American teenager, stars Emma Roberts, Natasha Richardson and Shirley Henderson, and is due for release next summer.

Kimberley plays English girl Kate who brings the female protagonist and new girl at school down to size.

Even prior to graduation, this July, Kimberley had been commissioned by the BBC to appear in their prestige period drama series, Cranford Chronicles, alongside a cast of A-listers including Dame Judi Dench CH DBE, Imelda Staunton OBE and Sir Michael Gambon CBE.

The five-part drama series depicts a small rural Cheshire town on the cusp of change and charts the absurdities and tragedies in the lives of the people of Cranford.

Kimberley’s road to success started when she was spotted at a College performance of The Comedy of Errors, at The Royal Shakespeare Company’s Complete Works Festival, by agent Ken McReddie Associates.

Kimberley said, “After seeing me in The Comedy of Errors, and then at the Sherman Theatre in a College performance of Quadrophenia, Ken McReddie Associates signed me. I really liked the agent and having such big, high profile projects lined up before I officially graduated was an amazing position to be in. I really trust them, they are so experienced, and valuing their judgment has helped me to pick the right projects.”

Kimberley studied BA (Hons) Acting at the College alongside other successful music and acting graduates like Rob Kendrick, who is starring in a production of Nicholas Nickleby at the Gielgud Theatre, and Roderick Howie who is now playing Oboe in the Ganzhou Symphony Orchestra.

Kimberley went on to say, “At the College we would often work on performances six or even seven days a week. That is what it is like when you are in the industry, so in that respect the College was great grounding, very realistic and it helped me to understand the balance between working and a private life. I notice that people who haven’t had professional training struggle with the amount of work.”

“The College also drum in to you the importance of little things like punctuality, discipline and taking care of yourself. You may be the best actor ever, but you are not going to get employed if you are always late.

Kimberley has just returned from Los Angeles where she completed filming on Wild Child, and Cranford Chronicles is due for broadcast in the autumn.

And hot off the press is the news that Kimberley has been cast in Paramount’s film adaptation of number one bestselling author Louise Rennison’s teen comedy ‘Angus, Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging.’ Kimberley will play indulged and pampered Lindsay – one of the lead girls.

“I have been on location for quite a long time, mainly staying in hotels, so I haven’t been home for a while, but can’t wait to spend some to with my family back home in Pontypridd.”