Zawe Ashton's diary

I still haven't decided where I'll be on Christmas Day; I could be here with my family in Stoke Newington or in Uganda with my grandma and all my cousins, aunties and extended family. I spent an amazing Christmas there two years ago. There's so much food, you never see the end of it: chicken, turkey, chapatis, peanut sauce, rice and gonjah, which is like eggplant. My grandma is head honcho, she organises everything and changes outfits throughout the day. She's rather fabulous.

I meet up with Idris Elba [star of Luther and The Wire] whenever he's over in London from LA. We're from the same part of town so we have a similar outlook on life and we really connect. Sometimes he goes too far and tells me I'm like his little sister, so I have to tell him to shut up. He's one of the most hard-working guys in showbiz and I'm lucky enough to be working on a secret project with him for the BBC.

Next year I'm going to follow Idris to LA and do a recce of the place. I haven't wanted to up until now because I've been so busy here but it's calling me: I've been dreaming about it and loads of different signs keep appearing. For instance, I'd love to be in Boardwalk Empire, and the other day there was a girl on the bus, who was clearly an actress, reading a script for the series. I'm superstitious to the point of madness. I'm a bit like Alice in Alice in Wonderland, constantly thinking, 'Who is the white rabbit, where am I supposed to be going? What if I turn left and what if I turn right?'

If it doesn't work out, I might start a band with a friend who will sing and I'll flow. When I was 17 I was crowned a Slam Poetry Champion. I did it quite a lot and made money out of it at one point. Now I couldn't think of anything worse than getting up on stage with just me, a mic and a poem. I don't know where I found the courage to express my innermost thoughts.

We start filming the second series of Fresh Meat next May. It was easy to revert to being a student for the first series, which was set in Manchester, as I went to drama school there. As a real student I got my work done (unlike my character, Vod) but in a shambolic way. I don't like to admit it but I was that student who went to the shops in their dressing gown. I turned 27 while we were filming and we went out and had an amazing time, probably a bit too amazing. We were all really hungover the next day, which was fitting because I had to do the scene in hospital after Vod's overdose. I was walking around in a hospital gown and really ill people were looking at me thinking, 'Oooh, what's she got?' and 'I hope it's not con-tagious'. It was a case of life imitating art imitating life.

My new film Dreams of a Life is nothing like I've done before. I play a real person, Joyce Vincent, who died in her bedsit in 2003 but whose body wasn't found until three years later when bailiffs went to collect arrears. At first I couldn't believe it and how it hadn't been widely reported. It easily could have been me or someone I know: she wasn't a druggie or an alcoholic; she was very popular, with celebrity friends such as Gil-Scott Heron; she had gone for dinner with Stevie Wonder and met Nelson Mandela. I felt like some sort of beacon while doing it, lots of people wanted to talk about it and discuss their own experiences of feeling alone.

I've just got back from Lapland where I was filming a one-off Christmas comedy for the BBC with Stephen Graham and William Ash. It's about a family on a Christmas holiday trying to cheer themselves up. I play the tour guide 'Jingle Jill', which is quite amusing because I'm more 'Stockport Stacey' than 'Nordic beauty'. The reindeer were very friendly and we got to stroke them. Surprisingly, their antlers are very soft and furry and they lose them every now and again and grow new ones. Some strut around proudly with massive Rudolph-looking antlers, while others just look a bit sad and more like donkeys. Going there got me in the Christmas spirit, but 25 Christmas dinners in one day's filming later, I soon snapped out of it. I'm now working my excitement back up in the run-up to the real thing.
Dreams of a Life is in cinemas from today (dreamsofalife.com). Lapland is at 10pm on BBC One on Christmas Eve