Hannah Waddingham was told she didn't have a face for TV as a child

Hannah Waddingham was told she didn't have a face for TV as a child.

The 'Ted Lasso' and 'Sex Education' star - who started out with fleeting roles in British soaps such as 'Brookside', 'Doctors' and 'Hollyoaks' alongside the West End before going on to star in several global hits including 'Game of Thrones' - was determined to prove the drama teacher who mocked her appearance in front of her whole class wrong.

She told BBC Radio 2's Michelle Visage on her podcast 'Rule Breakers': "I had one drama teacher that said to the whole class: 'Oh Hannah will never work on screen because she looks like one side of her face has had a stroke.'

"I thought, I will do. Come hell or high water, I will work on screen."

She sure showed them wrong as she's gone on to star in countless shows and earned an Emmy, a Critics Choice Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award for her portrayal of Richmond FC owner Rebecca Welton in Apple TV+ comedy 'Ted Lasso'.

Hannah hopes she inspires other theatre stars wanting to crossover into screenwork.

She said: "This is why, in my Emmys speech, I made a point - the one thing I said to myself [was], if this weird moment comes and I get this award, and I get my foot in this door, I'm going to rip it off its hinges for music theatre people, or theatre people, to follow."

However, proving the teacher wrong caused the 'Tom Jones' star to "knacker myself senseless".

She said: "I used to be doing a [theatre] show at night and I used to literally take anything to get myself on screen."

The 49-year-old actress found it "insulting" that in her early acting days she only ever landed "one scene or one episode" gigs and demanded more from her agents.

After a break, she landed the role of Septa Unella for eight episodes of 'Game of Thrones' from 2015 to 2016.

She said: "It got to the point where I realised I was only getting one scene in this, or one ep[isode] in that. And I went, do you know what? I think I've done enough... This isn't cool anymore. Why should I be constantly feeding into someone else's storyline?

"So I said to my agents at the time, 'I'm not doing it anymore... If it's one scene, I'm not doing it anymore, and you shouldn't be putting me up for it because it's insulting. I've been a leading lady for 22 years. I'm not doing it anymore. I'd rather be in a world where I'm appreciated.'

"So I fully stepped back. And then 'Game of Thrones' happened."

The 'My Family' actress went on to share how her headmistress did everything she could to stop her from pursuing her dream career.

She recalled: "My headmistress… said: 'You're bright enough to read drama', and I said: 'I don't want to read drama, I want to do drama'.

"She refused to give me a reference, so I managed to get a scholarship for the drama school I went to and I walked back in, put it on her desk and left the room without shutting the door."

Hannah added: "She was always dismissive of me because, it wasn't that I wasn't academic, [but] I knew what I wanted to do so it annoyed her that I turned my back on the academia. So she would purposely put everyone else in the school plays and have me understudy."