Doctor Who star Karen Gillan had to 'fight the urge' to sing Grease songs to John Travolta

Karen Gillan says she had to “fight the urge” to sing Grease songs to John Travolta while shooting a new Western with the star.

The 27-year-old Scottish actress, who rose to fame in the UK as Amy Pond in Doctor Who, recently moved to Los Angeles and is making a name for herself in Hollywood.

Her first major role was in last year’s Guardians Of The Galaxy, and she has just finished filming In A Valley Of Violence with Travolta, who famously played Danny Zuko in the musical movie Grease.

She told the Standard: “It’s a Western which is really cool - I never thought I’d get to do something so quintessentially American. It’s got John Travolta and Ethan Hawke in it. I had to fight the urge to sing Grease songs at Travolta, because that would have been really inappropriate. But that’s all I wanted to do and all I could think about.”

Gillan, named best female newcomer at the Jameson Empire Awards on Sunday, described her move to LA as a “bit of a whirlwind”.

“I’m a bit of a nomad at the moment. I’ve been travelling round and living in Boston recently, but LA is a bit of a base for me right now until I can work myself to a point where I can choose where I live. I know I am going to settle in the UK when I’m ready. So I’ll be back.”

Meanwhile, Love Actually director Richard Curtis says he would be up for writing another episode of Doctor Who after penning one in 2010. He said: “If I ever had an idea I might [write a new episode] but at the moment I’m very interested in not working.”

Most recently, he turned Roald Dahl’s children’s story, Esio Trot, into a television movie for BBC One starring Judi Dench and Dustin Hoffman.

He added: “I certainly don’t have a plan to direct anything else. I’ve just suddenly reached the stage where I’m so loving other people’s work.

“When you’re young, every time you watch something you’d think, ‘Oh, could I do better? How would I have done it?’ Whereas at my age, I’m suddenly looking at things other people do and saying how beautifully that person did it. That I couldn’t do it as well.”

Roald Dahl’s Esio Trot is out on DVD this week.