Erin Doherty took a break after 'The Crown' so people could "forget" her

She told Harper's Bazaar magazine: "There was a year, following 'The Crown', when I got sent all the [scripts with] princesses under the sun.

"It was lovely, but sometimes you need to step away to make audiences forget you.

"Then you come back and take them by surprise."

Despite her own success, Erin still gets starstruck - although she tries to keep her excitement in check to focus on her work.

She admitted: "I get so overwhelmed by little moments.

"On 'The Crown', I spent two whole years just trying to be a normal person because inside I was squealing.

"Honestly, I spend most of my days going, 'Erin, get your head down. Do your job.'"

Erin can next be seen as Mary Carr, the leader of the all-female Queen of the Forty Elephants crime syndicate in 'A Thousand Blows', and she found it easier to build her character than she did with Princess Anne because the gangster is no longer alive.

She explained: "It was a creative rather than a prescriptive process.

"There were enough facts - which I would never have come up with in my wildest imaginings, because no one else would have believed them - to build a backbone of her personality.

"Then I got to add the muscle myself. I wanted to make her human."

Erin had never heard of Mary before but was "inspired" by the story.

She said: "I had never heard of the Forty Elephants when the script landed on my lap, but I was hooked by the fact that, yes, these women were criminals, but they were also so good at their jobs.

"I was inspired by their fearlessness and taken aback that no one had broached telling their story before."