I'm no stranger to an identity crisis. I've gone by many names.

Creature
Given to me by my dad. His reasoning being, in that mysterious period after I was known to exist but before I was anything else, I was undoubtedly an animal. He has a habit of reaching the point first and being hard to argue with.

Fatso
The first cult I found myself in was Brownies. Having survived the initiation ceremony, I was handed a worn copy of The Brownie Guide Handbook, starring none other than an illustrated girl called Emily. She had a blonde bob with a blunt fringe. She glided through achieving her badges. She was thin. One wet, wintry evening saw the pack of us running indoor races, gym shoes shrieking along the hazardously shiny floor. Another Brownie came up close behind me to hiss, "Move it, Fatso." I was so stunned that I stopped moving. Not about the content, as I was painfully aware of the wrongness of my size. What stopped me was that, until she opened her mouth, I was feeling free, moving all my chubbiness at speed. I had been in the lead. Smarting from the loss, I tattled. An apology was initiated and witnessed by the relevant Owls. No one could really look me in the eye, darting glances at each other instead, confirming my pre-teen suspicions that adults told you one thing and called you something else in their heads.

Morgi
My parents moved me from my local primary to a private all girls' school in a different county with barely a hundred pupils. I couldn't make it to Brownies anymore because of the commute. Every cloud. Emily was in the top three girls' names of the year I was born, rendering a fifth of the school with the same name. Rapidly, no one was Emily. Shortened surnames became the more useful identifier, though the identical name meaning keyring clattered against all of our backpacks.

Cassandra
"But my friends call me Cassie." The name I used with men in bars. A conversational condom.

Benita
When you're trying to make a name for yourself in a competitive industry, it's a bit trickier when someone else has already made that name. I searched for her image. Another blonde. I'd get emails meant for her, invitations to BAFTA screenings, anecdotes about Rotterdam. One email was stunningly aggressive, seething about her / my current position, and how did she / me come to get it? A few seconds after my attempt at a neutralising response, the phone rang for just me. "I'm sorry for being, er, casual," the sender said, chasing it with an awkward, sinister chuckle. A surge of protection for her spiked in my blood for the rest of the day. Instead of sending her an invoice for virtual secretary services, I promoted one of my middle names. It's been my professional name for over a decade, though I've not worked in film for almost that long. But, once the credits roll, I can't move out of my seat until I've looked for our name.

35mm
A recent addition, to celebrate the age I've turned. I like it a lot.

[Redacted]
Some are simply too intimate.

Emily
The name Emily is of English origin and derives from the Latin name Aemilia, meaning 'rival' or 'striving'.