7am in 1911

I learned on my first ever adult shoot that modelling is not particularly glamorous. After a day spent retouching my makeup between every set until my face felt coated in plaster, climbing up on tables and kitchen counters in four-inch heels and pretending my head wasn't being squashed into the ceiling, and generally discovering all the other unanticipated delights involved in posing for photos, I felt far more glamorous after the shoot, being met by my pretty new boyfriend and driven home in his shiny sports car. (This being D - my first paid shoot was nearly four years ago now, scary thought.)

My first shoot as an extra for TV was a similar experience. 7am starts, never quite knowing what's going on, hours and hours of sitting around freezing in a draughty warehouse, learning to save up your energy so when you're finally needed you look like you only just arrived. Most spanking shoots avoid this level of faff, thanks to being such small, informal outfits. But sometimes the smallness and informality can cause problems of their own.

The final shoot for Lost Causes, my forthcoming Roué film with Adele Haze and Thomas Cameron, was a location shoot in London. We'd found some beautiful old mill buildings, but we needed to get there before cyclists and dog walkers started appearing along the canal. So there was no way around the 6am start: that's just the way it goes when you're filming.

However, for the main two-day shoot, I'd had the advantage (relatively unusual in the spanking industry) of professional hair and makeup - an absolute blessing for which we had Roué to thank, allowing us to concentrate on our acting. I realised the downside the day before the final location shoot, which was a tiny affair just involving me and the camera crew. Not only would I have to exactly recreate the look achieved by the makeup artist, for the sake of continuity, but I'd have to do it by myself at 6am...



This photo was taken before I did my hair, because the light in the bathroom was pretty. Then the crew arrived early and I had to do my hair in the car without a mirror. So much for continuity!

The shoot itself involved such exciting, glamorous, sexy events as:

• waiting in the car for 45 minutes while the crew made sure we had the all clear
• walking up and down on cobble in high heels for an hour (not easy when you can't even see your feet underneath all the skirt)
• more waiting while they filmed lots of background sound from the canal
• at least a million takes of the bit where I walk up to the front door and knock
• convincing a security guard we were only filming the cobblestones, not the listed buildings (of course)
• more takes of walking up and down in high heels to get the audio - I managed to convince them to let me do it on the flat pavement, so the footsteps would be less erratic. Heels and cobbles tend to incur uncontrolled skidding.

But it was all worth it in the end. We got it all wrapped, which is a wonderful feeling, and meant we could press on with finishing editing. And we got some lovely shots of my character approaching her doom new school, and wondering what awaits her:





It was a moody, blustery morning, well suited to character's state of mind. And my hair wasn't a problem in the end: the wind messed it up anyway as soon as I got out of the car, so it would have turned out looking slightly tousled however perfectly dressed it had been to start with :)