TedTest

From the Ted Talk by Maisie Williams: Why talent carries you further than fame

Unscramble the Blue Letters

Hi. I'm Maisie Williams. And I'm kind of just waiting for someone to come on stage and tell me that there's been some sort of miscommunication, and that I should probably leave. No? Damn it. (Laughter) So, some of you may know me as an acesrts. (Cheers) (Laughter) Some of you may know me for my really average ttwees. (Cheers) Oh, yeah. And some of you may be finding out who I am for the first time right now. Hello. Whether you knew me before or not, you're probably wondering what I'm going to talk to you about today. And I would be lying if I said it didn't take me one or two sleepless nights, trying to figure that out, too. At last, here I am. Upon fiinndg out the news that I would be giving a TEDx Talk, I did what I think most people do and watched about 50 TED talks back-to-back, and read "Talk like TED" by Carmine gllao for some inspiration. Was I inspired? Yes and no. Did it make me want to go out and change the world? Hell yeah. Did it make me feel like a totally inadequate pluibc seakper with absolutely no point to make, who was definitely in need of a big thesaurus if she wants to keep up? Indeed. What could I possibly say that would have any impact? What point am I trying to make? And who the hell thought it was a good idea to give me a TEDx talk? So here's the part where I tell you what I know: I'm the yusngeot of four siblings. My parents divorced when I was four months old. I really was the icing on the cake of a terrible marriage. (Laughter) I have two step silngibs who are younger than me and a half brtheor who's older than all of us. I grew up in a three-bedroom council house with four of my six siblings just outside of Bristol. I went to a very ordinary school. I got very ordinary grades. I wasn't quite good enough to get a gold star, and I also wasn't quite bad enough to be kept after school. I wlkaed that nice center line where if I kept my mouth shut in class, then I could probably get away with not being spoken to you by teachers for weeks on end. Everything about me was pretty damn ordinary, except for how I felt on the inside. I had big dreams. Shock. From as young as I can remember, I have dreamed of becoming a prfnoisesaol dancer. There are certain moremeis from my childhood that I would really rather forget. But during those temis of immense pain, I found myself instinctively walking over to my mother's CD player, cranking up the volume to drown out the noise and ltntieg my body move to the beat. It's hard to describe how it felt. I was harnessing emotions that I didn't even really know the nemas of yet. I was summoning all of this ergeny and feeling it flow through my body and out of my fingertips. I was alone in my own head, and I felt the most ailve. I didn't really know much about the big wide world then, but I knew that this feeling was addictive; and I was going to stop at nothing until I made it my profession. At eight years old, I was enrolled in dance class. And by ten, I informed my mother that I didn't want to go to shocol anymore. I wanted to be like Billy Elliot and go to stage school. This was the first opportunity or challenge I was presented with. Even as young as ten, I was willing to give up all of my friends and go away to board at a ptarvie school, away from my siblings, away from my mom. She would repeatedly ask me, "Are you sure this is what you want?" And to me, it was a no-brainer. I didn't just want this; I needed it. My grubby knees and crooked teeth were not on the list of requirements for becoming a professional deancr. And when I look back now, both myself and my mtheor looked seevlrey out of place. But at the time, I was just too ynoug and naive to feel inadequate. I didn't care. If Billy Elliot could do it, so could I. Once my audition was done, I returned home for two weeks of staring out the window, waiting for the pamsotn, waiting for my ticket out of my sleepy village and into a world of jazz hands and dorm rooms. It was good news followed by bad news: I had got in, but the fees to attend a school like this were not cheap, and despite my best efforts, I had not recevied any government fnnudig. I auditioned again the following year. And this time, I received 40% funding, but this was still just money that we didn't have, and it broke my haret. I was good enough. I made the cut. But I wasn't going anywhere. It was a blessing in disguise, although if anyone had said that to me back then, I probably would've given them the fgienr and told them to jog on. I wasn't willing to give up that easily. So at age 11, I was bitsrnug with excitement when my dance thaceer informed me of a talent show which boasted opportunities of mankig you a star. This was the second opportunity I was faced with. I enteerd into singing, acting, dancing and modeling. The talent show consisted of workshops and seminars with seictipalss who would help train you up for your performance at the end of the week. After meeting a woman called Louise Johnston in an improvisation acting workshop, she gave me the words "bowling ball," and asked me to create a short scene inspired by these words. After making her lguah with a fictional story, of how I threw a bowling ball at my brother and it boecund, she asked me to join her acting agency. I didn't really know what this meant. I knew that I would do auditions for films and maybe become an actor, but I still had big dreams of becoming a professional dancer, so this wamon was going to have to work a lot harder than that if she was going to cnvocine eleven-year-old me that I was going to become an actress. Was this going to take time away from the 30 hours of dancing I was doing a week? And what if I didn't get the part? Was this going to be too upsetting? And do arseestcs have teeth like mine? Because if they do, I'm yet to watch any of their movies. After meeting Louise in the February of 2009 and trying but fialing to land the part in the hit sequel "Nanny McPhee" to "The Big Bang," my second audition was for a show called "Game of Thrones." This was the third opportunity or challenge I was ptsenreed with. I climbed the steps to the Methodist cucrhh with my mother's hand in mine. I perched my tiny bottom in one of the seats outside the atuioidn room and listened to an aonnying girl with her even more annoying mother tell me all about the nuebmr of auditions she had done prior to this one. And also about her pet fish. My name was called, then I stepped inside. I had a hard Bristolian accent and dark rings around my eyes that were so big they took up half my face and a hole in the knee of my trousers which I tried to cover with my left hand as I was talking to the kind lady who taped my audition. But as soon as she psresed record, it all defitrd away. Much like when I was dancing in my mother's living room, I harnessed all of my insecurities and self-doubt and let it flow through the words that came out of my mouth. I was cheeky. I was loud. I was angry. And for this, I was perfect. After getting the part and shooting the pilot episode, the show slolwy grew to become one of the biggest shows in television history. To this day, we've shsmaed poruives HBO viewing records. We've been nominated for over 130 Emmys, making us the most Emmy-nominated show to ever exist. We've recently fhnsiied shooting our eighth and final season, which is predicted to smash records that we've already broken. And nearly a decade to the day since my first audition, I'm still wridoenng, when am I going to get to be Billy eiollt? (Laughter) I joke, but in all seriousness, I have absolutely no panls of slowing down. Throughout my time in this industry, it has been a minefield. I have grown from a clihd into an adult, and from four feet tall into a wpopinhg five feet tall. (Laughter) I have constantly been trying to say the right thing, accidentally saying the wrnog thing, trying not to saewr too much and trying to stop saying "like, like" all of the time. In frabruey of 2017, a friend of mine, Dom, and I were sggniwig brees in my kitchen, and he confessed to me that there is a huge problem with the creative industries. I agreed. The series of events that had got me to that point were based mainly on luck and timing and were unable to be recreated. He suggested to me that we create a social media, but just for artists to be able to collaborate with one another and create a career. This was the fourth opportunity or challenge I was presented with. "Great," I thought. "How the hell do we do that?" And daisie was born. Of course, everyone who I spoke to about my latest endeavor thought that I was mad; however, I know that this is something that I can help change. This last year in the industry, we've seen a huge shift with the Me Too movement. The industry is built with gatekeepers holding all of the power and snticleeg who they deem teanlted enough to advance to the next level. More often than not, it's easier to catch the attention of those people if you have graduated from an expensive school. But even then, I have so many feindrs who are fresh out of art school, having tirenad for years and are still no closer to creating a career. Now, I'm not claiming that with daisie I can make everybody a star, but I do believe that the key to success within creative iideunsrts is collaborating. Actors are only as good as their writers. Musicians are only as strong as their producers. And designers need their teams. To start the company, we self-funded. I had a pot of cash from "Game of Thrones" that I was free to invest wherever I liked. Dom had a series of businesses from the age of 16, which meant he was also left with a pot of cash. We threw our menoy together 50-50, and we built a team. Now, Lady Gaga has repeatedly said that there could be a room of 100 people, and 99 don't believe in you, but it just takes that one person to believe in you, and they can cghnae your life. Well, now we have a team of six. Over the next 16 months, we bilut our MVP. Now, if you're wondering what an MVP is, I only found out what it is about six months ago. And from what I can gaehtr, it's a product which proves as a ploberm wotrh solving with the minimum team effort. So basically from my point of view, you're mneraiktg something which you know is going to be good one day, but is a little bit bad right now. And for us, that was an iOS app. The six of us made an office in Dom's geadrn, and on August 1, 2018, we resealed our vroiesn one. We had over 30,000 downloads in the first 24 hours and over 30,000 cnmoetms asking when the Android version was going to be coming. Despite our app being imperfect, buggy and ltealrily built by one man alone, this was exactly what we needed for people to invest. We learned a lot from our angry users and our scary investors. And over the last six months, we have grown our team to 16 people. From then till now, we've been building version two, which we will be luhcaning in April. Within the industry, there is a common phrase which I think we're all pretty familiar with. And that is, "It's not what you know, it's who you know." And with disiae, I hope to give that power back to the creator. I want to encourage pploee to create a list of ctoncats that they will work with and support as they take their first steps into the fikcle and often calenlghing creative world. I am of the generation who grew up with the ienntert. I've never known anything else. We are connected, we are aware, and we are the futrue. I hope daisie can breathe new life into the slightly dtpsoiyan, ad-riddled hellscapes that social media pfmtrolas have become. I hope to create a space where people can boast their art and creativity rather than what car they are dinirvg and whether or not they bought it in cash or on fnciane. In a world where literally anyone can be fmouas, I hope to ipirnse people to be talented instead. Talent will carry you so much further than your 15 minutes of fame. So why am I telling you all this? The very fact that I'm here giving a TEDx talk right now is so far from anything I touhhgt that I was capable of. Even writing the bio for my speech made me ralziee that in a ddcaee, everything in my life has cgenhad. I am an Emmy-nominated actress, an ernpeeutrner and an activist; yet I have no formal qniiufcltioaas to my name. When I left school about seven years ago, I made it my mosiisn to cnuionte learning even though I never wanted to set foot in a classroom again. Who knows what's going to happen to my life in the next 10 years? I surely have no idea. I've never had an end goal. It's woikrng out okay so far. So tsrut that you're good enough. If there's one thing that I've learned is that there truly is a place for everyone. Ask questions, and laugh in the face of people who say that they're stupid questions. Be open to lnraenig and admitting when you don't know what the hell is going on. Refuse to hold yourself back, and dare to dream big. Thank you for leinnitsg. (Applause)

Open Cloze

Hi. I'm Maisie Williams. And I'm kind of just waiting for someone to come on stage and tell me that there's been some sort of miscommunication, and that I should probably leave. No? Damn it. (Laughter) So, some of you may know me as an _______. (Cheers) (Laughter) Some of you may know me for my really average ______. (Cheers) Oh, yeah. And some of you may be finding out who I am for the first time right now. Hello. Whether you knew me before or not, you're probably wondering what I'm going to talk to you about today. And I would be lying if I said it didn't take me one or two sleepless nights, trying to figure that out, too. At last, here I am. Upon _______ out the news that I would be giving a TEDx Talk, I did what I think most people do and watched about 50 TED talks back-to-back, and read "Talk like TED" by Carmine _____ for some inspiration. Was I inspired? Yes and no. Did it make me want to go out and change the world? Hell yeah. Did it make me feel like a totally inadequate ______ _______ with absolutely no point to make, who was definitely in need of a big thesaurus if she wants to keep up? Indeed. What could I possibly say that would have any impact? What point am I trying to make? And who the hell thought it was a good idea to give me a TEDx talk? So here's the part where I tell you what I know: I'm the ________ of four siblings. My parents divorced when I was four months old. I really was the icing on the cake of a terrible marriage. (Laughter) I have two step ________ who are younger than me and a half _______ who's older than all of us. I grew up in a three-bedroom council house with four of my six siblings just outside of Bristol. I went to a very ordinary school. I got very ordinary grades. I wasn't quite good enough to get a gold star, and I also wasn't quite bad enough to be kept after school. I ______ that nice center line where if I kept my mouth shut in class, then I could probably get away with not being spoken to you by teachers for weeks on end. Everything about me was pretty damn ordinary, except for how I felt on the inside. I had big dreams. Shock. From as young as I can remember, I have dreamed of becoming a ____________ dancer. There are certain ________ from my childhood that I would really rather forget. But during those _____ of immense pain, I found myself instinctively walking over to my mother's CD player, cranking up the volume to drown out the noise and _______ my body move to the beat. It's hard to describe how it felt. I was harnessing emotions that I didn't even really know the _____ of yet. I was summoning all of this ______ and feeling it flow through my body and out of my fingertips. I was alone in my own head, and I felt the most _____. I didn't really know much about the big wide world then, but I knew that this feeling was addictive; and I was going to stop at nothing until I made it my profession. At eight years old, I was enrolled in dance class. And by ten, I informed my mother that I didn't want to go to ______ anymore. I wanted to be like Billy Elliot and go to stage school. This was the first opportunity or challenge I was presented with. Even as young as ten, I was willing to give up all of my friends and go away to board at a _______ school, away from my siblings, away from my mom. She would repeatedly ask me, "Are you sure this is what you want?" And to me, it was a no-brainer. I didn't just want this; I needed it. My grubby knees and crooked teeth were not on the list of requirements for becoming a professional ______. And when I look back now, both myself and my ______ looked ________ out of place. But at the time, I was just too _____ and naive to feel inadequate. I didn't care. If Billy Elliot could do it, so could I. Once my audition was done, I returned home for two weeks of staring out the window, waiting for the _______, waiting for my ticket out of my sleepy village and into a world of jazz hands and dorm rooms. It was good news followed by bad news: I had got in, but the fees to attend a school like this were not cheap, and despite my best efforts, I had not ________ any government _______. I auditioned again the following year. And this time, I received 40% funding, but this was still just money that we didn't have, and it broke my _____. I was good enough. I made the cut. But I wasn't going anywhere. It was a blessing in disguise, although if anyone had said that to me back then, I probably would've given them the ______ and told them to jog on. I wasn't willing to give up that easily. So at age 11, I was ________ with excitement when my dance _______ informed me of a talent show which boasted opportunities of ______ you a star. This was the second opportunity I was faced with. I _______ into singing, acting, dancing and modeling. The talent show consisted of workshops and seminars with ___________ who would help train you up for your performance at the end of the week. After meeting a woman called Louise Johnston in an improvisation acting workshop, she gave me the words "bowling ball," and asked me to create a short scene inspired by these words. After making her _____ with a fictional story, of how I threw a bowling ball at my brother and it _______, she asked me to join her acting agency. I didn't really know what this meant. I knew that I would do auditions for films and maybe become an actor, but I still had big dreams of becoming a professional dancer, so this _____ was going to have to work a lot harder than that if she was going to ________ eleven-year-old me that I was going to become an actress. Was this going to take time away from the 30 hours of dancing I was doing a week? And what if I didn't get the part? Was this going to be too upsetting? And do _________ have teeth like mine? Because if they do, I'm yet to watch any of their movies. After meeting Louise in the February of 2009 and trying but _______ to land the part in the hit sequel "Nanny McPhee" to "The Big Bang," my second audition was for a show called "Game of Thrones." This was the third opportunity or challenge I was _________ with. I climbed the steps to the Methodist ______ with my mother's hand in mine. I perched my tiny bottom in one of the seats outside the ________ room and listened to an ________ girl with her even more annoying mother tell me all about the ______ of auditions she had done prior to this one. And also about her pet fish. My name was called, then I stepped inside. I had a hard Bristolian accent and dark rings around my eyes that were so big they took up half my face and a hole in the knee of my trousers which I tried to cover with my left hand as I was talking to the kind lady who taped my audition. But as soon as she _______ record, it all _______ away. Much like when I was dancing in my mother's living room, I harnessed all of my insecurities and self-doubt and let it flow through the words that came out of my mouth. I was cheeky. I was loud. I was angry. And for this, I was perfect. After getting the part and shooting the pilot episode, the show ______ grew to become one of the biggest shows in television history. To this day, we've _______ ________ HBO viewing records. We've been nominated for over 130 Emmys, making us the most Emmy-nominated show to ever exist. We've recently ________ shooting our eighth and final season, which is predicted to smash records that we've already broken. And nearly a decade to the day since my first audition, I'm still _________, when am I going to get to be Billy ______? (Laughter) I joke, but in all seriousness, I have absolutely no _____ of slowing down. Throughout my time in this industry, it has been a minefield. I have grown from a _____ into an adult, and from four feet tall into a ________ five feet tall. (Laughter) I have constantly been trying to say the right thing, accidentally saying the _____ thing, trying not to _____ too much and trying to stop saying "like, like" all of the time. In ________ of 2017, a friend of mine, Dom, and I were ________ _____ in my kitchen, and he confessed to me that there is a huge problem with the creative industries. I agreed. The series of events that had got me to that point were based mainly on luck and timing and were unable to be recreated. He suggested to me that we create a social media, but just for artists to be able to collaborate with one another and create a career. This was the fourth opportunity or challenge I was presented with. "Great," I thought. "How the hell do we do that?" And daisie was born. Of course, everyone who I spoke to about my latest endeavor thought that I was mad; however, I know that this is something that I can help change. This last year in the industry, we've seen a huge shift with the Me Too movement. The industry is built with gatekeepers holding all of the power and _________ who they deem ________ enough to advance to the next level. More often than not, it's easier to catch the attention of those people if you have graduated from an expensive school. But even then, I have so many _______ who are fresh out of art school, having _______ for years and are still no closer to creating a career. Now, I'm not claiming that with daisie I can make everybody a star, but I do believe that the key to success within creative __________ is collaborating. Actors are only as good as their writers. Musicians are only as strong as their producers. And designers need their teams. To start the company, we self-funded. I had a pot of cash from "Game of Thrones" that I was free to invest wherever I liked. Dom had a series of businesses from the age of 16, which meant he was also left with a pot of cash. We threw our _____ together 50-50, and we built a team. Now, Lady Gaga has repeatedly said that there could be a room of 100 people, and 99 don't believe in you, but it just takes that one person to believe in you, and they can ______ your life. Well, now we have a team of six. Over the next 16 months, we _____ our MVP. Now, if you're wondering what an MVP is, I only found out what it is about six months ago. And from what I can ______, it's a product which proves as a _______ _____ solving with the minimum team effort. So basically from my point of view, you're _________ something which you know is going to be good one day, but is a little bit bad right now. And for us, that was an iOS app. The six of us made an office in Dom's ______, and on August 1, 2018, we ________ our _______ one. We had over 30,000 downloads in the first 24 hours and over 30,000 ________ asking when the Android version was going to be coming. Despite our app being imperfect, buggy and _________ built by one man alone, this was exactly what we needed for people to invest. We learned a lot from our angry users and our scary investors. And over the last six months, we have grown our team to 16 people. From then till now, we've been building version two, which we will be _________ in April. Within the industry, there is a common phrase which I think we're all pretty familiar with. And that is, "It's not what you know, it's who you know." And with ______, I hope to give that power back to the creator. I want to encourage ______ to create a list of ________ that they will work with and support as they take their first steps into the ______ and often ___________ creative world. I am of the generation who grew up with the ________. I've never known anything else. We are connected, we are aware, and we are the ______. I hope daisie can breathe new life into the slightly _________, ad-riddled hellscapes that social media _________ have become. I hope to create a space where people can boast their art and creativity rather than what car they are _______ and whether or not they bought it in cash or on _______. In a world where literally anyone can be ______, I hope to _______ people to be talented instead. Talent will carry you so much further than your 15 minutes of fame. So why am I telling you all this? The very fact that I'm here giving a TEDx talk right now is so far from anything I _______ that I was capable of. Even writing the bio for my speech made me _______ that in a ______, everything in my life has _______. I am an Emmy-nominated actress, an ____________ and an activist; yet I have no formal ______________ to my name. When I left school about seven years ago, I made it my _______ to ________ learning even though I never wanted to set foot in a classroom again. Who knows what's going to happen to my life in the next 10 years? I surely have no idea. I've never had an end goal. It's _______ out okay so far. So _____ that you're good enough. If there's one thing that I've learned is that there truly is a place for everyone. Ask questions, and laugh in the face of people who say that they're stupid questions. Be open to ________ and admitting when you don't know what the hell is going on. Refuse to hold yourself back, and dare to dream big. Thank you for _________. (Applause)

Solution

whopping
pressed
swigging
talented
comments
bursting
private
fickle
woman
actresses
inspire
convince
trust
dancer
times
contacts
postman
changed
dystopian
actress
alive
working
worth
selecting
learning
swear
mission
annoying
beers
laugh
brother
specialists
professional
teacher
driving
famous
thought
daisie
launching
elliot
energy
received
future
decade
child
funding
challenging
heart
finding
gallo
making
speaker
failing
wondering
smashed
memories
audition
people
trained
slowly
mother
walked
built
entered
drifted
february
church
letting
marketing
youngest
platforms
industries
finger
entrepreneur
names
qualifications
friends
released
tweets
money
listening
version
siblings
problem
garden
young
public
continue
presented
school
realize
change
number
internet
plans
wrong
finished
bounced
literally
severely
finance
gather
previous

Original Text

Hi. I'm Maisie Williams. And I'm kind of just waiting for someone to come on stage and tell me that there's been some sort of miscommunication, and that I should probably leave. No? Damn it. (Laughter) So, some of you may know me as an actress. (Cheers) (Laughter) Some of you may know me for my really average tweets. (Cheers) Oh, yeah. And some of you may be finding out who I am for the first time right now. Hello. Whether you knew me before or not, you're probably wondering what I'm going to talk to you about today. And I would be lying if I said it didn't take me one or two sleepless nights, trying to figure that out, too. At last, here I am. Upon finding out the news that I would be giving a TEDx Talk, I did what I think most people do and watched about 50 TED talks back-to-back, and read "Talk like TED" by Carmine Gallo for some inspiration. Was I inspired? Yes and no. Did it make me want to go out and change the world? Hell yeah. Did it make me feel like a totally inadequate public speaker with absolutely no point to make, who was definitely in need of a big thesaurus if she wants to keep up? Indeed. What could I possibly say that would have any impact? What point am I trying to make? And who the hell thought it was a good idea to give me a TEDx talk? So here's the part where I tell you what I know: I'm the youngest of four siblings. My parents divorced when I was four months old. I really was the icing on the cake of a terrible marriage. (Laughter) I have two step siblings who are younger than me and a half brother who's older than all of us. I grew up in a three-bedroom council house with four of my six siblings just outside of Bristol. I went to a very ordinary school. I got very ordinary grades. I wasn't quite good enough to get a gold star, and I also wasn't quite bad enough to be kept after school. I walked that nice center line where if I kept my mouth shut in class, then I could probably get away with not being spoken to you by teachers for weeks on end. Everything about me was pretty damn ordinary, except for how I felt on the inside. I had big dreams. Shock. From as young as I can remember, I have dreamed of becoming a professional dancer. There are certain memories from my childhood that I would really rather forget. But during those times of immense pain, I found myself instinctively walking over to my mother's CD player, cranking up the volume to drown out the noise and letting my body move to the beat. It's hard to describe how it felt. I was harnessing emotions that I didn't even really know the names of yet. I was summoning all of this energy and feeling it flow through my body and out of my fingertips. I was alone in my own head, and I felt the most alive. I didn't really know much about the big wide world then, but I knew that this feeling was addictive; and I was going to stop at nothing until I made it my profession. At eight years old, I was enrolled in dance class. And by ten, I informed my mother that I didn't want to go to school anymore. I wanted to be like Billy Elliot and go to stage school. This was the first opportunity or challenge I was presented with. Even as young as ten, I was willing to give up all of my friends and go away to board at a private school, away from my siblings, away from my mom. She would repeatedly ask me, "Are you sure this is what you want?" And to me, it was a no-brainer. I didn't just want this; I needed it. My grubby knees and crooked teeth were not on the list of requirements for becoming a professional dancer. And when I look back now, both myself and my mother looked severely out of place. But at the time, I was just too young and naive to feel inadequate. I didn't care. If Billy Elliot could do it, so could I. Once my audition was done, I returned home for two weeks of staring out the window, waiting for the postman, waiting for my ticket out of my sleepy village and into a world of jazz hands and dorm rooms. It was good news followed by bad news: I had got in, but the fees to attend a school like this were not cheap, and despite my best efforts, I had not received any government funding. I auditioned again the following year. And this time, I received 40% funding, but this was still just money that we didn't have, and it broke my heart. I was good enough. I made the cut. But I wasn't going anywhere. It was a blessing in disguise, although if anyone had said that to me back then, I probably would've given them the finger and told them to jog on. I wasn't willing to give up that easily. So at age 11, I was bursting with excitement when my dance teacher informed me of a talent show which boasted opportunities of making you a star. This was the second opportunity I was faced with. I entered into singing, acting, dancing and modeling. The talent show consisted of workshops and seminars with specialists who would help train you up for your performance at the end of the week. After meeting a woman called Louise Johnston in an improvisation acting workshop, she gave me the words "bowling ball," and asked me to create a short scene inspired by these words. After making her laugh with a fictional story, of how I threw a bowling ball at my brother and it bounced, she asked me to join her acting agency. I didn't really know what this meant. I knew that I would do auditions for films and maybe become an actor, but I still had big dreams of becoming a professional dancer, so this woman was going to have to work a lot harder than that if she was going to convince eleven-year-old me that I was going to become an actress. Was this going to take time away from the 30 hours of dancing I was doing a week? And what if I didn't get the part? Was this going to be too upsetting? And do actresses have teeth like mine? Because if they do, I'm yet to watch any of their movies. After meeting Louise in the February of 2009 and trying but failing to land the part in the hit sequel "Nanny McPhee" to "The Big Bang," my second audition was for a show called "Game of Thrones." This was the third opportunity or challenge I was presented with. I climbed the steps to the Methodist Church with my mother's hand in mine. I perched my tiny bottom in one of the seats outside the audition room and listened to an annoying girl with her even more annoying mother tell me all about the number of auditions she had done prior to this one. And also about her pet fish. My name was called, then I stepped inside. I had a hard Bristolian accent and dark rings around my eyes that were so big they took up half my face and a hole in the knee of my trousers which I tried to cover with my left hand as I was talking to the kind lady who taped my audition. But as soon as she pressed record, it all drifted away. Much like when I was dancing in my mother's living room, I harnessed all of my insecurities and self-doubt and let it flow through the words that came out of my mouth. I was cheeky. I was loud. I was angry. And for this, I was perfect. After getting the part and shooting the pilot episode, the show slowly grew to become one of the biggest shows in television history. To this day, we've smashed previous HBO viewing records. We've been nominated for over 130 Emmys, making us the most Emmy-nominated show to ever exist. We've recently finished shooting our eighth and final season, which is predicted to smash records that we've already broken. And nearly a decade to the day since my first audition, I'm still wondering, when am I going to get to be Billy Elliot? (Laughter) I joke, but in all seriousness, I have absolutely no plans of slowing down. Throughout my time in this industry, it has been a minefield. I have grown from a child into an adult, and from four feet tall into a whopping five feet tall. (Laughter) I have constantly been trying to say the right thing, accidentally saying the wrong thing, trying not to swear too much and trying to stop saying "like, like" all of the time. In February of 2017, a friend of mine, Dom, and I were swigging beers in my kitchen, and he confessed to me that there is a huge problem with the creative industries. I agreed. The series of events that had got me to that point were based mainly on luck and timing and were unable to be recreated. He suggested to me that we create a social media, but just for artists to be able to collaborate with one another and create a career. This was the fourth opportunity or challenge I was presented with. "Great," I thought. "How the hell do we do that?" And daisie was born. Of course, everyone who I spoke to about my latest endeavor thought that I was mad; however, I know that this is something that I can help change. This last year in the industry, we've seen a huge shift with the Me Too movement. The industry is built with gatekeepers holding all of the power and selecting who they deem talented enough to advance to the next level. More often than not, it's easier to catch the attention of those people if you have graduated from an expensive school. But even then, I have so many friends who are fresh out of art school, having trained for years and are still no closer to creating a career. Now, I'm not claiming that with daisie I can make everybody a star, but I do believe that the key to success within creative industries is collaborating. Actors are only as good as their writers. Musicians are only as strong as their producers. And designers need their teams. To start the company, we self-funded. I had a pot of cash from "Game of Thrones" that I was free to invest wherever I liked. Dom had a series of businesses from the age of 16, which meant he was also left with a pot of cash. We threw our money together 50-50, and we built a team. Now, Lady Gaga has repeatedly said that there could be a room of 100 people, and 99 don't believe in you, but it just takes that one person to believe in you, and they can change your life. Well, now we have a team of six. Over the next 16 months, we built our MVP. Now, if you're wondering what an MVP is, I only found out what it is about six months ago. And from what I can gather, it's a product which proves as a problem worth solving with the minimum team effort. So basically from my point of view, you're marketing something which you know is going to be good one day, but is a little bit bad right now. And for us, that was an iOS app. The six of us made an office in Dom's garden, and on August 1, 2018, we released our version one. We had over 30,000 downloads in the first 24 hours and over 30,000 comments asking when the Android version was going to be coming. Despite our app being imperfect, buggy and literally built by one man alone, this was exactly what we needed for people to invest. We learned a lot from our angry users and our scary investors. And over the last six months, we have grown our team to 16 people. From then till now, we've been building version two, which we will be launching in April. Within the industry, there is a common phrase which I think we're all pretty familiar with. And that is, "It's not what you know, it's who you know." And with daisie, I hope to give that power back to the creator. I want to encourage people to create a list of contacts that they will work with and support as they take their first steps into the fickle and often challenging creative world. I am of the generation who grew up with the Internet. I've never known anything else. We are connected, we are aware, and we are the future. I hope daisie can breathe new life into the slightly dystopian, ad-riddled hellscapes that social media platforms have become. I hope to create a space where people can boast their art and creativity rather than what car they are driving and whether or not they bought it in cash or on finance. In a world where literally anyone can be famous, I hope to inspire people to be talented instead. Talent will carry you so much further than your 15 minutes of fame. So why am I telling you all this? The very fact that I'm here giving a TEDx talk right now is so far from anything I thought that I was capable of. Even writing the bio for my speech made me realize that in a decade, everything in my life has changed. I am an Emmy-nominated actress, an entrepreneur and an activist; yet I have no formal qualifications to my name. When I left school about seven years ago, I made it my mission to continue learning even though I never wanted to set foot in a classroom again. Who knows what's going to happen to my life in the next 10 years? I surely have no idea. I've never had an end goal. It's working out okay so far. So trust that you're good enough. If there's one thing that I've learned is that there truly is a place for everyone. Ask questions, and laugh in the face of people who say that they're stupid questions. Be open to learning and admitting when you don't know what the hell is going on. Refuse to hold yourself back, and dare to dream big. Thank you for listening. (Applause)

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation	frequency
big dreams	2
professional dancer	2
billy elliot	2
talent show	2
feet tall	2
creative industries	2

Important Words

absolutely
accent
accidentally
acting
actor
actors
actress
actresses
admitting
adult
advance
age
agency
agreed
alive
android
angry
annoying
anymore
app
applause
april
art
artists
asked
attend
attention
audition
auditioned
auditions
august
average
aware
bad
ball
bang
based
basically
beat
beers
big
biggest
billy
bio
bit
blessing
board
boast
boasted
body
born
bottom
bought
bounced
bowling
breathe
bristol
bristolian
broke
broken
brother
buggy
building
built
bursting
businesses
cake
called
capable
car
care
career
carmine
carry
cash
catch
cd
center
challenge
challenging
change
changed
cheap
cheeky
cheers
child
childhood
church
claiming
class
classroom
climbed
closer
collaborate
collaborating
coming
comments
common
company
confessed
connected
consisted
constantly
contacts
continue
convince
council
cover
cranking
create
creating
creative
creativity
creator
crooked
cut
daisie
damn
dance
dancer
dancing
dark
day
decade
deem
describe
designers
disguise
divorced
dom
dorm
downloads
dream
dreamed
dreams
drifted
driving
drown
dystopian
easier
easily
effort
efforts
eighth
elliot
emmys
emotions
encourage
endeavor
energy
enrolled
entered
entrepreneur
episode
events
excitement
exist
expensive
eyes
face
faced
fact
failing
fame
familiar
famous
february
feel
feeling
fees
feet
felt
fickle
fictional
figure
films
final
finance
finding
finger
fingertips
finished
fish
flow
foot
forget
formal
fourth
free
fresh
friend
friends
funding
future
gaga
gallo
garden
gatekeepers
gather
gave
generation
girl
give
giving
goal
gold
good
government
grades
graduated
grew
grown
grubby
hand
hands
happen
hard
harder
harnessed
harnessing
hbo
head
heart
hell
hellscapes
history
hit
hold
holding
hole
home
hope
hours
house
huge
icing
idea
immense
impact
imperfect
improvisation
inadequate
industries
industry
informed
insecurities
inspiration
inspire
inspired
instinctively
internet
invest
investors
ios
jazz
jog
johnston
join
joke
key
kind
kitchen
knee
knees
knew
lady
land
latest
laugh
laughter
launching
learned
learning
leave
left
letting
level
life
line
list
listened
listening
literally
living
looked
lot
loud
louise
luck
lying
maisie
making
man
marketing
marriage
meant
media
meeting
memories
methodist
minefield
minimum
minutes
miscommunication
mission
modeling
mom
money
months
mother
mouth
move
movement
movies
musicians
mvp
naive
names
needed
news
nice
nights
noise
nominated
number
office
older
open
opportunities
opportunity
ordinary
pain
parents
part
people
perched
perfect
performance
person
pet
phrase
pilot
place
plans
platforms
player
point
possibly
postman
pot
power
predicted
presented
pressed
pretty
previous
prior
private
problem
producers
product
profession
professional
proves
public
qualifications
questions
read
realize
received
record
records
recreated
refuse
released
remember
repeatedly
requirements
returned
rings
room
rooms
scary
scene
school
season
seats
selecting
seminars
sequel
series
seriousness
set
severely
shift
shock
shooting
short
show
shows
shut
siblings
singing
sleepless
sleepy
slightly
slowing
slowly
smash
smashed
social
solving
sort
space
speaker
specialists
speech
spoke
spoken
stage
star
staring
start
step
stepped
steps
stop
story
strong
stupid
success
suggested
summoning
support
surely
swear
swigging
takes
talent
talented
talk
talking
talks
tall
taped
teacher
teachers
team
teams
ted
tedx
teeth
television
telling
ten
terrible
thesaurus
thought
threw
thrones
ticket
time
times
timing
tiny
today
told
totally
train
trained
trousers
trust
tweets
unable
upsetting
users
version
view
viewing
village
volume
waiting
walked
walking
wanted
watch
watched
week
weeks
whopping
wide
williams
window
woman
wondering
words
work
working
workshop
workshops
world
worth
writers
writing
wrong
yeah
year
years
young
younger
youngest