Freddie Highmore and the fame factory

Freddie Highmore looks quite at home among the stacks in the library of Dulwich College. Any other 19-year-old with Johnny Depp on speed dial might be a little uncomfortable in such scholarly surroundings but Freddie (real name Alfred) is perfectly at ease. After all, the young actor has just finished his first year at Cambridge where he is studying Spanish and Arabic. 'I did all right,' he hesitates when I ask how he fared in his end-of-year exams. 'I got a First.'

Freddie first hit the big screen aged 11 in Finding Neverland, alongside Kate Winslet, with Johnny Depp as JM Barrie. His performance as Peter Llewelyn Davies, the boy who inspired Barrie's Peter Pan, won him heartfelt praise from Depp, who felt he was 'capable of anything', while screenwriter John August remarked that 'he's the kind of kid who could ask for a glass of water and break your heart'.

Freddie, almost as smooth-faced now as he was then, was less dazzled: 'I was never starstruck. At that age you don't recognise how lucky you are. You're not aware of their celebrity. I just saw them as friends.' He went on to appear in blockbusters such as The Spiderwick Chronicles, and as the eponymous hero in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, again alongside Depp. It was reported that Depp was so impressed by Freddie in Finding Neverland that he insisted on casting him again. 'I've never been told that directly by anyone who worked on Charlie,' says Freddie, 'but a lot of people seem to say how good it was to work with me It was great to work with Johnny twice. He doesn't see himself as being better than anybody else because he's a better actor.' They still keep in touch and meet up when they're in the same country 'to say hello'.

Freddie never went to drama school - but then, why would he? He learned by osmosis from Hollywood's finest. 'Johnny didn't give me particular words of advice, it was more stuff I picked up. If you watch people, like your friends, they have a big impact on you. There was never a moment when he sat me down and said, "Now, Freddie, this is what you've got to do."' He has worked with Helena Bonham Carter three times, in Women Talking Dirty, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Toast, last year's TV dramatisation of Nigel Slater's best-selling memoir, in which he played the troubled teenaged Slater. 'Helena's great fun and she's always looked after me. When I started out she was incredibly caring, always making sure I was all right.'

Growing up on screen has meant increasingly risqué scenes for Freddie. Toast called for a gay kiss and more recently he's found himself getting steamy with Julia Roberts' niece Emma Roberts in the American high-school drama The Art of Getting By. Freddie plays George, a slovenly teenager who makes it through high school without doing a lick of work and is faced with judgement day as graduation looms. While trying to focus, he falls for Sally, played by Roberts, a promiscuous teen who lures him into her world of late nights and wild partying. Filming took place in New York over five weeks last spring just before Freddie was due to sit his A levels at Highgate School. Unlike George, he breezed through with four A*s. And unlike George, Freddie is not drawn to the seamier side of life. In the film George has a drunken New Year's Eve, which ends up with him vomiting, whereas Freddie insists he has never done anything so louche. Rather he is a quiet and considered young man, and so slight that you fear if you were to look away for a moment, he might disappear.

Freddie was raised in Highgate. His mother is the formidable super-agent Sue Latimer, who represents her son alongside other child stars such as Daniel Radcliffe. He and Radcliffe have known each other since before either of them started acting. 'Our families have been friends for years,' he explains. 'I just saw Dan in his show [How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying] in New York. He sings and dances and carries the show. It was very impressive. I'm not sure I could do that.'

Freddie's father, Edward Highmore, is also an actor (most notably in Howards' Way) and was a stay-at-home father to Freddie and his younger brother Bertie. The family doesn't watch much television (although Freddie does admit to having a little sob when watching an emotional drama), and he is not one for modern modes of social networking such as Facebook and Twitter, preferring to meet his friends in person. At school he was industrious and would always take a tutor on location so as not to get behind with his studies. According to his teachers, he was 'very bright and very modest'. 'I was usually quite good and I wasn't a slacker,' he explains. Evenings were spent either doing homework or watching his beloved Arsenal.

He hasn't allowed the excitements of Cambridge to divert him from his studies either. Most of his time is spent in the library or playing football for his college, Emmanuel. And he is not friends with Charlie Gilmour, recently imprisoned for his part in last year's student riots. 'None of my best friends were at the student protests and I've never met Charlie Gilmour,' he says. 'I think everyone recognises that he made a bit of an error.'

Freddie hasn't signed up for any student theatre productions, preferring to keep his acting and university lives separate - 'It's nice that acting is not always present in my life' - and is currently enrolled at LSE's finance summer school: 'I figured it would be interesting to get a taste for something I might want to do when I'm older.'

I ask whether he thinks he'll grow out of acting. 'I'm not really sure. It's been great fun but it's one of those things that might or might not happen. I could wake up tomorrow and think I want to do something else.' Finance is certainly a savvy extracurricular activity for this highly bankable young star. ES