AN INTERVIEW WITH DOROTHY DUVAL

We sat down with Dorothy Duval in her hotel room in Los Angeles. She's flustered, small curls of hair that have fallen free from a messily-made ponytail surrounding her face. She's as real as the photos she posts to Instagram, no matter how many times reports tell her she feeds a fake reality to her followers. A suitcase sits in the corner of the room and none of the clothes are folded. Duval has claimed to prefer throwing things to folding, as it gives her 'a way to express what the inside of her mind looks like', in her own words. Next to the case, a side table with a laptop, three hard drives full of footage, and a phone that is blowing up with notifications. She tells me to ignore it, and that years of being a young person online has taught her that the silent mode on her phone isn't just for cinema trips

Duval has built herself a small empire. While previously unknown to anybody who didn't use social media, she burst onto the scene six years ago with a supporting role in Captain America: The First Avenger. Now she rules her own dominion of fans on Instagram, Twitter and YouTube, and is currently starring as Lucia Rossi on CBS' Criminal Minds, as the estranged daughter of a BAU agent David Rossi.

"I'm on my way to the airport," she tells me, her Australian accent almost too strong to understand what she's trying to say. "I got the call this morning telling me that filming starts tomorrow. That's the problem, nobody gives you any notice. Speaking of notice, Marvel don't like to give you any, I've learnt that the hard way [She laughs, exhaustion evident in her smile]. You get the script the day you're filming, you get the call to get to set the day before. On... it was 2010, we were filming the first [Captain America: The First Avenger] film. I was only fourteen and I was actually in Victoria, where I'm from in Australia, and I got the call on a Sunday evening saying 'hey Doe, we're going to need you tomorrow morning'. I was like, f**k that, it takes an entire day to get to Atlanta and no way in hell am I going to want to film after a 20 hour flight."

You would never be able to guess that Duval is from rural Australia if you were to watch her television shows and movies. In Criminal Minds, her Italian-American accent is spot on. In Captain America, a Brooklyn-native such as myself couldn't tell the difference between the real thing and her imitation. She acknowledges this, and jokes that it's because of her American grandfather.

"My grandparents met during the war. Pop's from Massachusetts and he came here to defend us from the Japanese or something- I don't really know much about the war, I dropped high school history as soon as I could. So he met my nana, who was this little farm girl who got called into Darwin to be a nurse, I think. Pop's the reason I can do American accents, he used to teach me how to talk like him when I was a kid. Mum gave me a bloody belting when I came into the house talking like him- I'm just kidding."

We talk about Marvel, of which she admits to being a huge fan. "I loved being on set for the first two Cap films, even though I was only on Winter Soldier for like, two days. I love the whole experience that comes with Marvel films, too. I'll stick by Marvel my whole life, I love the movies and they're the ones who got me into the acting scene. I seriously owe them so much."

She tells me about Criminal Minds, which she tells me she loves more than anything she's ever done. Even before she starts to talk, you can see her entire demeanour change. It's common knowledge for fans of both the show and the girl that she got her part by expressing her love of the show on her social media accounts.

"Me and most of the cast are close. I'm good friends with [Matthew Gray] Gubler. We're both bizarre, weird people and I suppose we bonded over that. I practically live around Joe [Mantegna]'s house, his wife loves me. He's my dad when my dad isn't there."

Our interview closes when she zips up her suitcase, and ushers me out of her apartment. She had to be on a plane (she tells me she can't disclose the location without invoking a lawsuit), and I had a deadline. She hugs me like an old friend and promises we'll catch up soon, then jokes that it'll be within the decade because of the back-to-back filming of Avengers films.

Catch Dorothy Duval in Criminal Minds on CBS.

a/n: a long one and its shit but yolo