Jaime Winstone, je t'aime

First you hear her laugh: a delicate, gobby little cackle that lets you know you're in for a good time. Then you see her boots: shiny purple Doc Martens. Then she hugs you: a quick, elfin grab. Her tiny face is framed by mismatched earrings and a bleached blonde quiff, somewhere between Paula Yates and Madame de Pompadour. Jaime Winstone, 26, is like a pint-sized Chloë Sevigny: a natural hipster, a muse to fashion houses such as Fendi, and a committed, versatile actress on stage and screen - and she's turning into a hot-shot film producer as well. Soon we will get on to her 'dark, twisted' imagination and

'So I went out to my friend's birthday party, all dressed in black, very chic, and I came home wearing a great big wedding dress. I think my boyfriend was quite, erm, surprised I just love dressing up. Styling people is like play to me, it's always come so naturally. Every time I go to a festival I take three Ikea bags of dressing-up clothes. Last night I wasn't wearing a veil, but I came back with a big Pam Hogg pom pom on my head.' That dirty giggle again. She is indefatigable. Last night was a Tuesday, for goodness' sake.

Her boyfriend, a photographer called Tom Beard, lives East and Winstone lives West (Holland Park - with a new flatmate to replace Daisy Lowe, who has moved in with Doctor Who). She loves ricocheting around London. 'Different vibes, different tribes. London is my oyster.' She met Beard at Coachella music festival, the US answer to Glastonbury, last April. 'We became good friends first. I wasn't looking' - she had only lately split from her long-term love Alfie Allen, Lily Allen's little brother - 'but then when we came back he knocked on my door and asked if I wanted to go to an Iggy Pop concert in Brixton.' She beams. 'I was like, "I'll get my bag" He's very talented, and it's inspiring being with some-one who does something different from me.'

Her own talent first hit cinemas in Noel Clarke's urban dystopia Kidulthood in 2006, in which she gave a supremely confident, winning performance as a charismatic, selfish little slag called Becky. Since then she has played a 'very strategic' game, only taking parts she really wants, like the lesbian conceptual artist Elaine in the art-world caper Boogie Woogie, a rebellious factory worker in Made in Dagenham, and one of the murdered Ipswich sex workers, Anneli Alderton, in the TV docudrama Five Daughters. 'There are parts I've turned down that I could have gone very mainstream with,' she says. 'I had to choose between a part in St Trinian's and Donkey Punch.' The former was a feelgood family caper starring Colin Firth and Rupert Everett; the latter, a psychological thriller set at sea, named for a violent sex act, with no stars in the cast. To her, the choice was easy. 'They let me develop my own death scene, which was really cool. I did that stunt myself.' Her body appears to smack the ocean from a great height. 'Yeah, and because we were in South Africa there was a whole dive team looking out for sharks.'

She's a bit of a geek for dark fantasy. 'Twin Peaks, The Lost Boys, Total Recall But then my personal favourites that I sit at home watching are sci-fi films and games, like Legend, Dark Crystal and Game of Thrones. I grew up on horror films. As a kid I didn't want to watch Snow White, I wanted to watch Freddy Krueger and Hellraiser and Fright Night. Very stylised, 1980s horror. I used to find them really funny. Me and my sister were sort of fearless.'

Over the last four years she has developed from scratch the film Elfie Hopkins, in which she plays a young wannabe detective ('my first title role!') who discovers her neighbours have a penchant for cannibalism. 'It's very different. It's not for everyone. It's like watching a Tim Walker shoot come to life.' She co-created it with her friend, the director Ryan Andrews. 'My dark fantasist, I call him. Our minds just meld together.' One night in a basement in Splott, South Wales, they brainstormed the idea into existence 'and now both of us are so proud we actually made it happen'.

At one point a big production company was backing the film. 'There were a lot of executives breathing on it, wanting to make it 3-D and very mainstream and different to our original idea, so we pulled it. We walked away. We appreciated the money and the help but it wasn't working.' One important name was on board, though: Ray Winstone. 'It was a nerve-racking thing handing him the script, but he liked it and he was really happy to be in something small and grass roots. It was great filming with him for the first time. A bit overwhelming.' As co-producer, she was always asking for 'More blood, please!' although it had to be the right sort of blood. 'Quite neat, stylised blood, more like Tarantino or Russ Meyer does. Nice blood. Pretty blood. I'm not so much into real gore and splatter-fests, like Hostel and Saw, which I think are borderline snuff.'

Tucking into smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, she holds her knife and fork the opposite way round to most people. She's left-brained and dyslexic, not formally well-educated (she bunked off Burnt Mill School in Essex a lot) but very smart, very sure of her own instincts. On the Murdoch phone-hacking scandal, she says: 'I just think the whole thing stinks. I think Murdoch should be prosecuting his own staff for what they did. You're either with them or against them. For me it's pretty simple: those who did it should go to prison. They messed with a standard human right. I've had friends who were phone-tapped and they were disgusted and really upset. I actually turned off the news last night. I don't want to know about that world, and I wouldn't want my kids to know about it.

'I never read papers and took them literally. My parents don't really believe in it Their relationship was tackled once and it's, well, it's not right: it's real, it's people's lives' Her own relationship with Alfie Allen was picked over in the papers 'woah, far too much. When people start talking about you and your partner, that's not nice. We were natural kids, and that level of scrutiny wasn't right. It's no big deal anyway; we're friends now. When the papers first started letching me, my dad was really upset and wanted to protect me, as any parent would.'

She's had 'a full-on muddy festival summer so far', enjoying 'hardcore raves in little tents' at Glastonbury - 'Odd Future and Tyler The Creator were amazing' - to Gay Day at Lovebox with her friend Mel Blatt, formerly of All Saints. 'I got a whole lot of gay love there.' Beyoncé at Glastonbury was 'wonderful, obviously, though some of it was a bit cheesy - a bit "calm down, love" '. But her stand-out gig of the summer so far was Prince at Hop Farm. 'My boyfriend wanted to see Pulp but I said, "We can't miss Prince." And we found ourselves just Purple Raining. He hypnotised us. It reminded me of listening to Prince when I was little in the car or with my auntie Annie. By the end I was crying glitter tears.'

She does love to party. 'I do. People like my mum say, "You know, you need to calm down," and my sister Lois, being an older sister [29], worries for me. About six months ago she said, "I'm worried you're going too wild" and she gave me a crystal to protect me' - Jaime shows me the pendant round her neck - 'I love it, I haven't taken it off since she gave it to me. There are some friends I've had to help who have had problems, and some people I can't be around. Some people have this addictive thing and they pick up drug problems very quickly. I don't have that. It's not me. I'm only out partying if I've earned it by working my arse off first. I'm only happy if I'm working. I'm very motivated.'