Naomie Harris taps to combat nerves

Naomie Harris practises "tapping" to ease her nerves.

The 'Skyfall' actress finds using her fingers to stimulate accupressure points helps her to relax before beginning work on a new movie or while she is preparing for a particularly heavy scene.

She said: "I do something called EFT, which is emotional freedom technique, otherwise known as tapping, which really helps me.

"I'll do that before a first day of filming. And if there's a particularly tricky scene I'm worried about, I'll do it before then as well."

Despite training to work in theatre, the 39-year-old actress hates working on stage because she gets so sick with nerves.

She said: "I'm not a theatre animal. It's not my thing at all. I went to the Bristol Old Vic theatre school, so I've trained to be a theatre actor, but in every performance I felt like I was going to throw up.

"I don't think that level of nerves is particularly healthy.

"I suppose the challenge is to channel those nerves into energy, excitement, and things that help your performance, but I didn't manage to find a way to do that."

Naomie can next be seen alongside Ewan McGregor in 'Our Kind of Traitor', in which they play an ordinary couple who get caught up with the Rusian mafia while on holiday in Marrakech.

And the British beauty admits she wouldn't cope well if she was involved in a similar situation because she is such a "scaredy-cat".

She told Observer New Review magazine: "I'd react incredibly badly, I'm such a scaredy-cat, so I don't think I'd be going on any of those adventures.

"I'd be like my character Gail, not wanting to go. That she goes along with it is solely because of her depth of love for Perry and I don't think I would be brave enough to do that for anyone."