She emerges from the lift carrying an oversized black leather handbag spattered with white paint and a take-away coffee.

She is very petite and in her skinny jeans and worn denim jacket, she looks every inch the budding starlet.

There is no doubt that Ruth Negga is the next big thing. For a young actress she has an impressive body of work incorporating film, theatre and television. She is currently rehearsing for the Abbey Theatre's production of The Bacchae of Baghdad, a new version of Euripedes's The Bacchae, written and directed by Conall Morrison. She was recently selected as the Irish Times Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Lavinia in Titus Andronicus but was forced to miss the ceremony because she was in fact, being presented with another award at the Berlin Film Festival.

"I got the Shooting Star Award, " she says modestly. "They give it to one actor from every country and I think they gave it to me because of Breakfast on Pluto and another film I did called Isolation."

She is charmingly vague about the precise details of her work and achievements or perhaps she is accustomed to playing them down to appease those who might be made uneasy by her success. She seems very down-to-earth and is not above admitting that she shopped around for her skinny jeans to avoid paying designer label prices.

Negga has huge almond-shaped, brown eyes that stare out between thick, curling eye lashes. She often speaks with her chin resting on her hand and her head pointing downwards so that her eyes must peer up from underneath her perfectly, arched brows.

The effect is quite mesmerising and I wonder what it must be like to be so striking?

"Well, I don't think I'm ugly but I don't think I am stunningly beautiful either. I suppose I look different and that can be a good thing but it can also be a bad thing too.

'Looks' as in an individual's 'look' is important because that is how we get jobs; our CVs are sent out with a headshot so if you don't have the 'right look' you won't get the job. I know I am distinctive compared to most Irish actors and that has helped me but it can also act against you. However, there are directors who think outside the box and are prepared to cast differently and that is refreshing also."

Negga was born in Ethiopia and lived there for just four years before being brought to her mother's hometown of Limerick. Her Ethiopian father died when she was very young and her childhood was spent largely between England and Ireland.

"I can't remember how long I was in each place so I couldn't say I was three years here and then four months there. I didn't like England, well, I didn't like school. I don't like having to be anywhere which is why I think I like this job so much because you do something and then when it's finished you move on."

Her relatively unconventional upbringing may have provided some of the raw material a young actress requires. It is not hard to imagine the ripples of interest that she must have caused arriving at a new school and as she sits with quiet confidence in the bar of the Abbey Theatre, she looks like a very self-possessed young woman.

Negga says she has always wanted to be an actress but at the same time she was never a Billy Barry-type child who tapdanced her way through her teens.

"I went to a couple of Saturday morning workshops but it was never a case of, 'Hi guys, I want to be an actress. It never occurred to me that I might not actually work. I just thought you went to drama school and then you finished drama school and then you got work. Fortunately, and I know how lucky I have been, but that is what has happened to me."

She studied drama at the Samuel Beckett Centre in Trinity College and has worked consistently from the day she graduated.

Director Annie Ryan was so impressed by her performance in her graduation showcase she immediately cast her as Lolita in the Corn Exchange's production in the Peacock Theatre.

While she has been kept busy, there have been low points, one of which she remembers as being particularly upsetting but yet is able to recount it with a wry humour.

"I got a terrible review on British television. This English writer who I can't name came over to Dublin to see a play I was in and she came to a preview which I think is wrong because previews aren't really prepared for critics. Anyway, one night we all headed over to the pub after the show and there she was reviewing the play. Well, because it was so noisy they had put on subtitles and she began to talk about me, ' Ruth Negga, for one thing she was miscast from the start and she was so screechy!' Everyone just looked at the floor and anywhere but at me and I was mortified because the whole pub had been watching. I burst into tears and got upset but then I called my mum and I was fine. I got over it because you have to. It's simply no good dwelling on the opinion of someone else because you can't change it.

"Of course, the difference between my job and other people's is that it is me up there.

It's my heart and soul that has gone into the performance. It's not like I've just written a dissertation on Jane Austen, it's my interpretation of the words and when people criticise it can really sting.

"I got a really good piece of advice a few years ago and it was quite simple . . . 'If I believe in it, then it's good enough'. I think most people would like to have that kind of faith in themselves but it's not always easy."

Her career has taken off during the last year since she starred alongside Cillian Murphy in Neil Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto.

She does not talk expansively about Murphy or Jordan but prefers to concentrate on the differences between acting in front of the camera and onstage.

"It was much more condensed, if you know what I mean. I had to learn how to maintain the intensity of feeling but yet at the same time bring it down a level. I enjoyed that but I had to think about it quiet a lot."

There is no doubt she is quite an intense young woman. She admits to spending long periods researching her roles and simply thinking ("I work a lot of stuff out just by staring at a wall which I think can be a good way of dealing with a lot of things.") She responds to all questions thoughtfully but yet at the same time her answers seem carefully measured as though she has been coached or she has taken time out to rehearse the interview beforehand.

"Being interviewed can be odd because how can 30 journalists from all over the world ask me questions for five hours I mean, I'm not that interesting! I do understand what it's all about though, I know that it's a necessary process which we have to go through in order to promote the film. " And with that the Abbey Theatre publicist informs us that my time is up. She has been hovering around in the background for the duration of the interview, checking her watch intermittently. "Ruth has to get back to work, " she says firmly. Negga smiles goodnaturedly, picks up her huge black handbag and makes her way back to the rehearsal studio.