London, Mar 3 (IANS): English actress Anne-Marie Duff, best known for her roles in films such as Enigma, Nowhere Boy and Before I Go To Sleep, said after her first job she thought everybody would become her best friends. The reality, of course, was different.

"After my first job in acting I believed everybody would be best friends for ever. We'd all become so close. You realise quite quickly that it's like lots of passionate love affairs. Along the way you collect people and they stay with you. You might not see each other properly for five or six years then you're back in rehearsals together and it's as if you never left," Marie Duff said, femalefirst.co.uk reported.

She added: "That's the nature of actors -- they're generally very open, funny and forgiving people."

The London-born actress still remembers shedding tears of joy upon getting her first break.

She told the Guardian: "I remember getting the bus home from my very first job. I was skint, on Equity minimum, it was a small part. I cried with happiness. I thought: My god, I'm actually doing this. I'm actually acting for a living!"

Britain's theatre industry is in crisis due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The actress can't wait for the pandemic to ease and for the industry to return to something like normality.

She said: "Being in a room when a dancer holds another dancer or an actor makes themselves vulnerable is going to be so potent. We've been behind masks for ages. It's very powerful psychologically what that does to us -- you can't see me smile, can't hear me properly. It will be amazing to hear someone play a guitar in front of you."

The actress added: "The real world is what we do, but the arts are who we are."