“I have this feeling that I entered the room as one and left a different person,” I tell Mia McKenna-Bruce as our connection strengthens over a Zoom call in late November. “Yeah, I think it definitely has that effect on people,” she agrees. It’s a grey and crisp-cold morning in London, but Mia’s excitement, confidence, and friendliness feel seasonal-depression-proof. Since the release of How To Have Sex, Molly Manning Walker’s critically acclaimed debut feature film where McKenna-Bruce takes centre stage with her character Tara, she has seen her life take an abrupt U-turn. “It’s been crazy. We wrapped the film like a year ago, and it’s just been a complete whirlwind,” she says. “It’s just been incredible.”

Born and raised in South East London, the 26-year-old slipped into her artistic upbringing so naturally that it’s hard to believe it wasn’t an act of faith. “I was basically a kid that had too much energy, and, um, that hasn’t changed by the way,” she tells me, laughing. “So my mum took me to a local dance school when I was two years old and, as I started dancing, I kind of fell in love with performing, I guess.” She recalls making her mum and dad watch her putting on shows in their living room, pretending to be Hannah Montana. But little did she expect that, two decades later, she would indeed be living some sort of ordinary girl-to-rockstar kinda life.

“One day I watched Titanic and I was mortified by it all. I was so sad that my mum had to get my grandad to pretend to be the director and explain to me um that they were acting,’cause I literally couldn’t sleep for weeks,” she continues. “He also had no idea about the industry at all. He was just making it up as he went along but obviously had a clearer idea than I did at like four years old.” Understanding that two people could put so much intensity, emotions and personality into a character was enough to sparkle her interest—catapulted by a lifelong obsession with Shirley Temple. “ I used to watch the same documentary of her on repeat every day after school, and I had this little notebook with all these notes about Shirley Temple.”

From her first audition for a musical in Croydon found in her local newspaper to an 8-minute long standing ovation after the first screening of How To Have Sex at the Cannes Film Festival, where the cast took home an Un Certain Regard award, a lot has clearly changed. She’s now nominated in two categories at the British Independent Film Awards (BIFA), as “Lead” and “Breakthrough”, and has also been nominated for the best “Lead Actress” at the European Film Awards. But Mia’s self-awareness, ambition, and passion for her craft remain the same.

How To Have Sex is a stomach-turning, sweaty and raw production where we follow three 16-year-old British girls on their way to a classic post-GCSE rites-of-passage holiday in Malia, Crete’s party capital, with two goals in mind: snuggle as many people as possible and have the best time of their lives. But what we actually get is the most beautiful, relatable and soul-touching reflection of consent, sexual upbringing, and girlhood.

“[The first time I heard about the movie] was December, so it was Christmas time before we shot it. I got sent a self-tape and I just read the script and straight away I was like ‘oh my god’. Reading the script felt like having a conversation, it was so naturalistic all the way through,” she recalls. And that’s a feeling the audience also gets, as the movie allows you to have a sense of proximity with the characters, built up not only on a memory-unlocking script that takes anyone born in the 90s on an intense and introspective journey through our own teenage times but also on the many unspoken, tension-inducing scenes, where nothing is said between the characters but so much is felt.

I wonder, then, what it takes for a group of young actors to achieve this kind of bond and relationship in such a short period of time. “Isabella [Odoffin], the Casting Director, and Molly [Manning Walker] did an amazing job at finding us,” she says. In the summer that led to their months filming in the party capital, they were immersed in an intense and long process of getting to know each other, but not much was needed, according to McKenna-Bruce. “When we all got in the room together, it felt like we’ve known each other for such a long time already, which is obviously really important to me. It sounds so cliche and cringy, but we are literally like family,” she shares, with a smile gracing her face.

That unforgettable day in Cannes was the second time the cast watched the film; they sat down for a family-like intimate and private screening some weeks earlier before having to share their masterpiece with a live audience. “I don’t really know how to describe it. Obviously, I’ve been on this journey with Tara, but I was so in it all the way along, so to actually sit back and watch it and kind of disconnect that it was me playing her, it definitely hit me in the way I think it hits so many people when they go to watch the film.”

Amid neon skin-tight outfits, endless rounds of colourful hard-liquor shots, intense exposure to the island sun, and the giddiness surrounding a long-awaited coming-of-age girls’ trip, How To Have Sex takes us on a wild and unexpected ride. In an attempt to avoid any spoilers, I walked into a cult-ish cinema in Shoreditch on a Friday evening, expecting another film on booze, girl drama, and smudged eyeliner, and left feeling seen and acknowledged, wrapped in an emotional hug. The underlying fragility, uncertainty, and confusion of a group of girls transitioning to adulthood, especially surrounding Tara’s battle with wanting to lose her virginity, and when doing so, feeling a knot in her guts as if something was wrong, is truly a masterpiece.

But her breakthrough in the industry is not the only major life milestone Mia has to juggle at the moment. One month after wrapping up the film, she got pregnant with her first child, now 11-weeks-old. As we talk, she’s sitting outside on a short break from her packed diary, en route to a day-long shoot. “It’s kind of like, there’s two worlds existing at one time, it’s just crazy,” she shares. “What’s the secret to balancing everything,” I wonder. “That’s a good question,” we share a laugh, “It’s all possible because I have an amazing support system.” I ask if stepping into Tara’s shoes, in any way, changed the way she experiences motherhood. “Definitely, I think it’s just made me more aware of the importance of being an open book and making sure, you know, to have these conversations. I think just being so much more aware and in tune to like the things that you do and say and how they affect other people. He’s only 11 weeks old, but one thing that I really want to make sure that I’m doing is making sure everything that I say to him and his upbringing is true,” she finishes.

“I think Tara kind of encapsulates so many people, and so many people relate to Tara on some level. And I recognized that straight from when I read it, I felt like, ‘I know this girl’, do you know what I mean,” she shares. “So it didn’t feel like I had to go and do loads and loads of research or anything like that, but I also have a younger sister, that’s 16, so I was like, ‘yeah, I’ve seen her behave in these ways’,” she laughs.

As we get ready to part ways, I feel as connected to Mia as I did to Tara. A conversation with McKenna-Bruce is full of moments that feel so close to home, drenched in sensibility and the smiley eyes of someone who’s proud of everything they’ve accomplished.

“Do you think a man will ever get the full meaning behind the film?” I can’t help but ask. “It’s really interesting because when I first read the script, I kind of felt the same as you. As there’s definitely a side of it that women relate to differently, which is really sad. But there have been so many men as well who have walked out of screenings and stuff and have been really grateful for being able to watch this film and have this understanding, and a lot of men have come away and gone ‘Oh, I’ve realised that I was Paddy [Samuel Bottomley’s character] in my life’. And if they can realise that, hopefully, it means that they can stand up to other men in their life, and they can turn around and be like, either go and watch this movie or have these conversations to make sure more of this isn’t happening. So, I do think it’s maybe not to the same level, but it’s definitely resonating with men as well, which is incredible.”