Katie Leung found her Harry Potter fame "overwhelming" and "difficult"

Asked how she dealt with sudden global fame, she told The Guardian newspaper: "I don't think I did. It was overwhelming from the get-go.

"Being in the spotlight from that age, when you're already insecure, was difficult, to say the least.

"At the time, I was having a lot of fun. I thought: this is different from school, and I really did not enjoy school. So it was a way to escape. I'm still trying to figure it out, really, how it affected me.

"I don't know if anything could have been done back then to make things better or easier.

"At that age, you're curious. I remember being very curious about what people were saying about me, and I was Googling myself. Nobody could have stopped me, because I was old enough to make up my own mind."

Katie thinks she became "less outgoing" as a result of the unkind comments she received online at the time.

Asked how she coped, she said: "I didn't. I think it just sat with me, and it affected me in ways like, 'Oh yeah, I made that decision because people were saying this about me.'

"It probably made me less outgoing. I was very self-aware of what was coming out of my mouth."

The Bridgerton star initially "gave up" acting after Harry Potter ended because she felt so "lost".

She said: "I remember coming out of it and thinking, 'Nothing's going to beat it,' because it was so successful.

"I remember being lost, going, 'What's next? People will have these high expectations of me topping it, and it's never going to happen.'

"I think I was so afraid of meeting these expectations that I gave up, or didn't give myself the chance, after it, to try and continue acting."

She began a degree in photography but ultimately realised she wanted to act and won a place to study drama at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where she tried to distance herself from her Harry Potter background.

She admitted: "I tried really hard not to mention it, even when we were doing introductions at the beginning of the year, even though everybody knew. I didn't want people to think that was the reason I got in.

"Not that it was, but I was really hard on myself. I was trying to constantly prove I was more than just the actor from Harry Potter."