2. Shorts Story

"I was never that comfortable in front of the camera, it always terrified me," Arnold has said. "The others in No 73 really wanted to be actors, but I was 18 and really I had just fallen into that line of work. I'm surprised I lasted that long really."

The director-to-be found her interests moving behind the camera, becoming interested in other aspects of production.

She wrote a youth-focused environmental series called A Beetle Named Derek, and began to edge towards directing.

After attending the AFI, she produced several short films, including Milk and Dog (made for the BBC), but it was Wasp (above) that really took off, thanks to some extra funding.

"Cinema Extreme's philosophy is to encourage filmmakers who've made a couple of films already by giving them another go at making a short.

"They commissioned four and I thought that I would just have a bash. They were very heavily subscribed because there are very few opportunities to get funding for films. Every time something like that happens, there's a real deluge of material that's given to them.

"I was one of four. I wrote three scripts in a week and thought, 'Off they go. We'll see what happens.' You think that it's a long shot but I was very lucky.

"They picked Wasp out of the three scripts that I submitted but they said that it was up to me if I wanted to do one of the others. Since they liked that one, I went along with them. I never seemed to have time to make another draft but it turned out all right!"

Better than all right - Wasp scooped 38 international awards, including an Oscar for Best Live Action Short in 2005.

Feature films seemed a natural leap…

Next: Walking the Red Road