Malala: The normal teenager trying to change the world

Nobel prize-winner and campaigner Malala Yousafzai Credit: Fox Searchlight

By ITV News Correspondent Nina Nannar

The location of our interview was kept under wraps until the last moment - it was a reminder that this was a teenager on a terrorist hit list - a girl who was shot by the Taliban for speaking out and who has subsequently had to flee her beloved motherland Pakistan.

Malala Yousafzai is small and delicate in the flesh. In fact when you meet her it is hard to imagine such a shy, softly spoken girl addressing world leaders from a platform with hundreds of camera lenses trained on her.

She seems touchingly out of place sitting in an interview room with me. She is wearing her traditional Asian Shalwar Kameez, as bright as she is quiet.

"It's nice to live in a society where two cultures can live together," she tells me later, "me wearing a shalwar kameez, my friends wearing jeans!"

It is a glimpse into this life, in Birmingham where her family settled after she was treated for her gunshot wounds, that makes He Named Me Malala, a new film about her life, so interesting.

The film by director Davis Guggenheim is based on Malala's book about her fight to make schooling a right for every girl, first in Pakistan which led to her shooting, and since around the world.

We see Malala addressing the UN in the film, but we also for the first time see her in her kitchen at home, teasing and being teased by her two cheeky brothers.

We see her describing her nine-year-old brother Atal, as “a really good boy,” but 14-year-old Khushal as “the laziest one.” And then Khushal describes his older sister as “the naughtiest girl in the world.”

Malala with her mum Toor Pekai Yousafzai and brother Atal in their Birmingham home. Credit: Fox Searchlight

In other words, it's an attempt so show the world's most famous teenage girl as just that, a teenager going to school, interacting with her family, her mother who appears at times, unhappy with her new life, struggling to settle down. It was because of the language barrier, Malala tells me.

The 18-year-old is also shown looking at celebrities online - such as Brad Pitt and Roger Federer. She giggles at the mention of asking a boy out though - my parents would be surprised, she adds.

It is clear that security remains an issue in her life but her school friends are normal with her, she insists, if she wants to go the market or the cinema, or cross the road to get an ice cream she can.

In between her foreign trips to promote rights for girls - when we meet she has recently returned from Syria and Lebanon - she has been sitting exams and got 6A*s and 4 As in her GCSEs. She has her eyes on the future - one in which she may fly the nest.

"I want to do Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford," she tells me. And she hasn't ruled out running for Prime Minister in Pakistan.

You cannot help but like Malala when you meet her in the flesh - she has a film out all about her, and she is anything but a film star. She is trying to live a normal life, but that for her includes trying to change the world.

'No-one can stop me': Malala Yousafzai talks to ITV News about her hopes of becoming PM and her new Birmingham accent