Kerry Washington has credited her Scandal character Olivia Pope for helping her learn how to be a "leader in my life".

The 49-year-old actress starred as the White House communications director turned consulting firm fixer in Shonda Rhimes' Scandal from 2012 to 2018.

Despite taking on numerous projects since Scandal came to an end, Kerry is still arguably most famous for her portrayal of Olivia which, she said, also had a massive impact on her own life.

She told Defined magazine: "When I first started playing Olivia Pope I understood what power looked like and how it moved through the world, but I hadn't really stepped into my own power.

"She taught me how to be a leader in my life, in my home, in my career, in activism, she taught me how to have my name on that front door."

Kerry does her best to take life lessons from all the characters she plays on screen, as she mused: "If I'm lucky, I'm taking on a character at a crossroads when she's learning something enormous, and I weave her lessons into my soul.

"Then I pick up another character who teaches me incredible life lessons about who I want to be or who I don't want to be, and again I get to weave in all of her learning, express something that I need to express through her, then put her down."

Elsewhere in the interview, Kerry reflected on how her concept of perfection has changed as she's aged.

She explained: "When I was younger I let 'perfect' be defined by other people's ideas of me rather than of my own desires and sense of self.

"I reached for a cultural idea of perfection that had a lot to do with thinness, numbers on a scale, a label size and fitting into an outfit on a runway.

"I've really shifted away from that, to perfect being about health and wellness and strength and flexibility. I care very much about appearance, but more about posture and strength and less about sample size and numbers on a scale."