Keisha Castle-Hughes talks motherhood

When news broke last year that 17-year-old Whale Rider actress (then 16) Keisha Castle-Hughes was pregnant, many people were shocked.

Strangely, news of her pregnancy broke around the time The Nativity Story came out in theatres - a film in which she played another young mother: Mary. Keisha gave birth to her daughter Felicity-Amore in April. The father is her 20-year-old boyfriend of four years, Bradley Hull. In an interview with the New Zealand edition of The Australian Women's Weekly, Castle-Hughes spoke about life as a teen mother.

She says of the reaction to her pregnancy, "I just didn't expect it. Absolutely everyone in the country had something to say about it. I thought, 'At the end of the day, I am going to be the one looking after this baby in the middle of the night and it doesn't affect you.'…Yes, I was scared when I found out I was pregnant. But if I got pregnant when I was 27, I would have been scared too because it is a huge step."

Though she's younger than most mothers these days, Keisha still experiences the same maternal instincts. She said she often becomes paranoid and checks on Felicity-Amore several times a night. The actress explained, "I remember when one of my friends had a baby she said it was like that in the first few weeks. And I said, 'If I had a baby I would just sleep the whole time and I probably wouldn't even wake up for it.' But it's so true because this little person relies on you and I know if anything happened, it would be my fault."

Don't expect Keisha to drop off the radar now that she is a mother. She said, "Just because I have a baby, it doesn't mean that my career is going to go kaput. I have a really ambitious streak in me. I want to do it now more than I ever did."