HOLLYWOOD star Gwendoline Christie has told how she was “terribly bullied” at school and turned to fashion as an escape.

The actress, who has become a cult icon after playing woman warrior Brienne of Tarth in the popular American television show Game Of Thrones since 2012 and Captain Phasma in two Star Wars movies, revealed that at the age of 15 she would often skip school and catch the train to London from Worthing, where she grew up.

In London, she would scour the stalls in Kensington Market, sketch mannequins at the V&A and browse Vivienne Westwood’s boutique.

“It was a combination of wanting to escape the unpleasant narrative that was being applied to me at school, where I was bullied terribly,” she told ES Magazine.

“And loving the transportative nature of the arts. It was about not wanting to live a prescriptive life.”

It has been widely reported that Gwendoline, who lived with her parents, a salesman and a housewife in Worthing, attended Warden Park School, now Warden Park Secondary Academy, in Cuckfield.

“The school “felt unable to comment” on her comments.

Standing 6ft 1in at the age of 14 and reaching 6ft 3in as an adult, the actress had been labelled “unconventional” from a young age. “You either think I’m unconventional and there’s no place for me and therefore I should disappear.

“Or you think good, I’m happy to be on the outside.

“Because if this is the small-minded, mean, uncompassionate viewpoint of the inside, then I don’t want to be there.

“I’m happy out here with all the other leftovers, who show love and support for each other.

“All of the inconsistencies, complexities and ugly parts – whatever that might mean – can exist and beauty can be made out of it.

“That’s what I want beauty to be.”

Earlier this year, Gwendoline, 39, filmed her final scenes as Brienne in the phenomenally successful TV series Game Of Thrones, available on Sky, with the final series due to be broadcast next year.

She described how she cried for two hours after taking off her costume for the last time.

She saying: “It... was, in every sense of the word, incredible that that part should come along, made for me in a way that none of my friends would’ve identified for a second.

“They saw all of the fighting, the physicality, the fact that it was a character who was constantly being described as ugly.

“None of the people who knew me could understand why I would want to play that part.

“I had to cut my hair, change my body, strip off my make-up.

“This is not the person I have presented to the world at all.”

The young Gwendoline loved dancing and hoped to be a gymnast until she suffered a back injury at the age of 11.

She developed a taste for acting at school when she played Lady McBeth at the age of 15, and went on attend the drama school Drama Centre London.

There, Four Weddings and a Funeral actor Simon Callow became her mentor. “He was a very, very strong figure at the forefront of my development into adulthood,” she told vmagazine in 2015.

Her early career was dominated by stage roles, including Mrs Hubble in the 2005 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Great Expectations.

Then her big break came when her name was bandied around the internet as the ideal actor for the role of Brienne after word got out the series was in development.

Fans contacted her agent urging her to audition for the role and she spent months working out and losing a stone and a half to look the part ahead of the audition.

She said: “I had to make a substantial leap physically to even be considered, let alone exceed the capacity of those around me who were competing for the part.”

Since she shot to fame on Game of Thrones, she starred as Commander Lyme in the film The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 in 2015 and as Captain Phasma in Star Wars: The Force Awakens in 2015 and last year’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

She is currently one of the faces of Italian fashion brand Miu Miu after being spotted at a party by supermodel Kate Moss, who signed her up to her own modelling agency, Kate Moss Agency.

For the interview with ES Magazine, Gwendoline, whose partner is the fashion designer Giles Deacon, was photographed by David Bailey.

She wore a series of designer outfits including a £6,700 Fendi cape-dress, an £850 Charles Jeffrey Loverboy coat and custom-made jacket and trousers by Gareth Pugh.