Taylor Schilling grew up "feeling very different" from her peers.

Taylor Schilling

Taylor Schilling

The 'Orange Is The New Black' star sympathises with Piper Chapman, her character in the Netflix drama, as she knows what it is like to not conform to society's "rules".

She told DIVA magazine: "I've never been in jail so I can't directly relate to that kind of an experience. But I understand the perspective of someone who was meant to follow the rules of getting married, having children, and being successful ...

"I grew up feeling very different and that is something I understood about Piper and how she has to abandon the facade while she's in prison and stop trying to keep up appearances. As soon as I started playing the character I was fascinated by all the dilemmas she's facing in terms of who she really is and who she has been pretending she is to others in her life."

Meanwhile, the 31-year-old actress previously revealed she thinks she was "born rogue".

She said: "I think I was just born rogue. My parents did not have a good relationship. There was no sense of, 'This is where you belong. This is how you have a friend over for a tea party. This is how you go to a dance'. It was chaotic. I thought, well, I might as well go off-map.

"I appreciate what I learned at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. [It made me] unafraid of the stag. I'm not afraid of Chekhov or Shakespeare. But I thought, 'How much more theory can we talk about?' I had to spread my wings."


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