Actress Mia McKenna-Bruce has spoken about the emotional impact of watching her film How to Have Sex at the Cannes Film Festival, where it received an eight-minute standing ovation and won the Un Certain Regard award. The 26-year-old plays Tara, a 16-year-old pressured to lose her virginity on a boozy trip to Malia, Crete. 'I sobbed my heart out,' she said. 'You really see her journey, the nuances of the experiences she has, in a way I had no idea was possible.'
The film, a debut from writer-director Molly Manning Walker, follows three teenage girls on a post-GCSE holiday. McKenna-Bruce noted that the shift in her character's emotions is gradual, reflecting the disorientating nature of sexual assault. 'The emotions at the start are very different to the end, but the change is gradual. It's deliberately hard to know exactly what's going on at times,' she explained.
McKenna-Bruce, who gave birth to her first child five weeks ago, described the experience of promoting the film with a newborn as 'logistics-heavy'. She said motherhood has changed her perspective: 'With baby, it's the first time that acting doesn't feel like the be-all and end-all in my whole life. It's no longer the priority.'
The actress, who grew up in New Eltham, south-east London, began her career at age eight in the West End production of Billy Elliot the Musical. She later appeared in EastEnders and the Tracy Beaker franchise. Reflecting on her early roles, she said she has always been drawn to complex stories, but only realised the pattern while filming How to Have Sex.
