Dressing up with Naomie Harris

A lot of actors say a character starts with the shoes. In James Bond rehearsals I wear a lot of the sportswear brand Y3 but with Burberry kitten heels because Miss Moneypenny wears heels.

I’ve had to put in some serious time and effort practising walking in heels. Whenever I have to present anything in heels, I have nightmares the night before about falling over. A catwalk is my idea of hell.

When I’m filming Bond the most important thing is getting enough sleep. I wear cosy monogrammed pyjamas and a silk eye mask, apply Dr Gowri Motha night oil and listen to a hypnotherapy sleep CD.

I didn’t take anything from the Skyfall set, but Sam Mendes [the director] gave me a baseball cap and Barbara Broccoli [the producer] gave me a lovely bracelet and necklace.

As a student at Cambridge I had no fashion sense and looked very grungy. Zadie Smith was my contemporary and wore really colourful head scarves and always looked chic.

I recently met Zadie again at a dinner at [Burberry CEO] Christopher Bailey’s house. It’s the first time we’d spoken at length — we mostly talked about babies.

My biggest fashion faux pas was wearing a Matthew Williamson dress to the BAFTAs several years ago. It was inappropriately short. I looked very out of place and made it on to a lot of worst-dressed lists.

It gets really cold on the red carpet at this time of year and if you’re wearing a beautiful dress, you can’t really cover up in a coat or fit any kind of thermal underwear underneath.

A couple of Oscars ago I wore a gold dress made of recycled materials, including sweet wrappers, by Ghana-born designer Michael Badger. It had a large split up one side. You have to have a certain amount of grace to pull off the thigh-high-split look... you also have to be very careful about the underwear you wear.

Naomie Harris wore a pink rainbow dress in Swiss lace with Perspex embellishment and crystals (pictured) by Swarovski Collective designer Peter Pilotto to the British Fashion Awards