Promoting two new films while rehearsing for a Shakespeare lead in the West End, you’d expect Amara Karan to be harassed at best.

Instead she’s funny, lively, eloquent and cool as a cucumber. But as an Oxford graduate who cut her teeth at the Playhouse and OFS, she said her time here set her up for life. And she’s going to make the most of it without a fuss.

A Fantastic Fear of Everything, Simon Pegg’s new film in which she plays Sangeet, is due out this week, and All in Good Time, a comedy drama set in Bolton about a newly-married couple who struggle to consummate their marriage, is in cinemas right now.

Amara will also be seen in Kidnap & Ransom II on ITV, reprising her role as a British hostage negotiator. So promotion is the name of the game for the 30 year-old at the moment. “Yes, there’s lots going on but that’s they way it goes, like buses — all the good parts together,” she says, flashing her perfect white teeth.

And what a range. Amara made her film début as the love interest in Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited, then as a schoolgirl in the 2007 film St Trinian’s, followed swiftly by her stage début in 2008 as Jessica in the RSC’s The Merchant of Venice and as Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew.

Pretty impressive then? “I don’t see it as a meteoric rise,” she says. “I started off strongly and have been steadily working ever since. And I’m lucky to have such a steady start, but you do have to work hard — it’s all hard graft.”

But then having studied at St Catherine’s College, the experience set her up for life. “Oxford helped because it’s very tough and you have to work and be smart about what you want. So when I wasn’t working or revising that’s what I did, that was my routine, so I learned to be super-organised.

“I also met lots of people like me there who loved theatre and would tell me what plays were coming up and what auditions were going on, and slowly you develop a reputation for yourself and they start coming to you.

“So I did treat Oxford like a drama school and chose St Catherine’s for its outdoor theatre,” she admits. And yet Amara didn’t consider becoming an actress until she was well ensconced in the City earning a fortune — to an observer the writing was on the wall. “I know, I know,” she shrugs. “But growing up [in Wimbledon] I never said I wanted to be an actress because I had no notion it was a way to make a living. It was so removed from my reality, it would have been like saying I wanted to be a pop star.”

And, while in the City, she found working in an office interminable. “I just didn’t enjoy that way of working. That’s the thing about acting — it doesn’t feel like work. I thrive off it instead. So I’m fully out of the closet now,” she smiles.

That much is obvious. But even then it wasn’t easy: “My parents were worried, but I would be if I was a parent with a daughter who wanted to be an actress. Because we didn’t know the first thing about the industry, agents or casting directors.

“And I still wouldn’t advise anyone to go into this lightly because you do come under scrutiny and rejection. So for me it’s not about meteoric rise, but a sustained career and challenge.

“The acting is the release but you have to stretch yourself, focus, prepare and challenge yourself. That’s the thing about acting, it’s all-consuming.” An Oxford girl through and through then.

A Fantastic Fear of Everything is released nationwide tomorrow (June 8).