Bella Ramsey has said they were never a teenager and jumped straight from “kid to adult”.
The English actor rose to fame when they were 13, portraying Lyanna Mormont in the fantasy HBO series Game Of Thrones and now stars alongside actor Pedro Pascal in The Last Of Us.
Speaking to The Observer, the 21-year old said they had struggled to make friends as a child and felt like they “belonged” when surrounded by adults on the set of Game Of Thrones.
Ramsey said: “It felt very natural. Immediately it felt like a place where I belonged, which I’d never felt anywhere else in my life, not at school, not in any of the millions of clubs I was a part of.
“There is now an element of me looking back and being like, ‘Oh, I was never a teenager’. I do feel like I went from kid to adult. I had to show up on set every day and be responsible and have this very adult job.
“Because I’ve grown up a lot with people much older than me, that is the dynamic that I’m really comfortable in and really good at.
“Now, living in London, I’ve got a small group of friends who are my age – for the first time, really. That’s been a really, really positive thing of letting go of the shy, loner kid inside of me. Honouring that part of me, but also being, ‘No, I can get along with people my age! And I do like hanging out with you, and you like hanging out with me, which is maybe even crazier’.”
Because of their quick rise to fame, the actor missed out on more traditional schooling later on in life and instead picked up new talents including Brazilian jiu-jitsu, boxing, and horse riding.
They added: “You never know when the medieval times are going to come again. And when they do, I’ll be ready.
“But it was a really nice thing for me to do grappling and fighting. Because I never had the experience as a kid of friendly fighting with friends. So it felt like I was living a childhood dream.”
The second series of The Last Of Us was released in April and stars Ramsey alongside Pascal in a post-apocalyptic world based on the action-adventure video game franchise of the same name.
The second season is set five years into the future from its first series, which follows Joel Miller, played by Pascal, as he reluctantly takes teenager Ellie, played by Ramsey, across the post-apocalyptic US to find her safety amid a fungal-based pandemic that turns people into zombie-like creatures.
