Allen told "Loveline" that the audience was "brought to tears at the sight of a troubled young girl doing something good". At that point Allen said she knew that music was something she needed to do either as a lifelong vocation or to get it out of her system. She played the piano to grade 5 standard and achieved grade 8 in singing. Allen also played violin, guitar and trumpet and was a member of a chamber choir. Her first solo was "In the Bleak Midwinter". She appeared as a lady-in-waiting in the 1998 film "Elizabeth", which was co-produced by her mother. That same year, Allen appeared in the music video to the Fat Les song "Vindaloo". She dropped out of school at age fifteen, not wanting to "spend a third of her life preparing to work for the next third of her life, to set herself up with a pension for the next third of her life."