“I’ve done just about anything,” she says. “I’ve been a typist, a paralegal, insurance adjuster, phone sex operator, stripper, peep show girl, journalist and finally a screenwriter.”

A penchant for blogging ultimately led the Chicago-born Cody to penning Juno. The story of the titular teenager (played by Ellen Page) who finds herself pregnant and decides to give the child up for adoption, it won Cody a Breakthrough Award at the Hollywood Film Festival in 2007. Such has been the response to the script that already Cody has found herself working with none other than Steven Spielberg, on a TV pilot called The United States of Tara. With horror script Jennifer’s Body also in pre-production, Cody finally looks like she’s found a job she can stick at.

First off, we have to ask, is Diablo your real name?

It’s a fake name. I picked a pseudonym when I started writing about the sex industry to protect myself. My real name is Brooke. Brooke Shields was real popular in the late ’70s!

So how close are you to the character of Juno?

Well, I’m not really Juno. I’ve never had a baby, which is a miraculous feat. But the character is autobiographical. When I was a teenager, I had a friend who got pregnant. That was a difficult thing for us to get through as friends. She was grappling with an extremely grown-up issue at the time. I didn’t really understand – I was more interested in going out and getting my blue Slushie! I was more like Juno’s friend Leah to be honest. But the one thing I took away from that experience was remembering the way she was treated. I remember her saying that she’d endured sniffy remarks from doctors, so I did take a little bit of that and put it in the script, particularly the scene with the ultrasound technician.

Was writing the script a cathartic experience for you?