My best thing was going on for a whole week as the lead in a West End play two years ago. I was understudying Lindsay Duncan in Noel Coward's Hay Fever at the Noel Coward theatre in St Martin's Lane. She was taken ill and I got to play one of the biggest, most flamboyant leading ladies ever written. I was onstage with Jeremy Northam, Olivia Colman and Freddie Fox for eight whole shows. It was heaven.
All my non-acting friends and family assumed it would lead to great things but of course it didn't. I don't think I'll understudy again either - that kind of luck is very rare and as a normal engagement it is a terrible waste of time, although being paid to knit and do jigsaw puzzles can have its own appeal. I don't like how my fun was based on the misfortune of my leading lady either - she was awfully ill, poor thing.