Lindsey Stirling’s music videos, which have made the 28-year-old violinist and dancer an even bigger YouTube sensation than Grumpy Cat, are generally staged with the kind of attention to detail typical of a Hollywood blockbuster.

“Moon Trance”, for instance, features enough picturesquely decrepit members of the undead to stock the next Underworld sequel, while “Roundtable Rival” is set in a kinder, gentler Deadwood, albeit one that features a time-travelling electric guitarist as its handsome villain. And the videos that don’t rely on complex staging are set amidst gorgeous scenery: Stirling’s dramatic interpretation of Howard Shore’s Lord of the Rings theme finds the elfin fiddler in a flowing white dress, playing to emerald fields and an azure ocean.

But when asked about her most memorable shoot, Stirling doesn’t cite her mermaid routine on “Beyond the Veil” or getting up close with John Legend for “All of Me”.

Instead, she picks a more recent, and more taxing, undertaking: her location work for “Dragon Age”, in which she gives the video game’s theme a chugging, orchestral makeover.

“There’s not one that’s the most memorable,” Stirling cautions, on the line from her Los Angeles home. “Every one has so many memories to it—great jokes or terrible memories. For example, just in the last couple of months I was at the top of the mountains in Norway, shooting the ‘Dragon Age’ video, and I was literally freezing.…It was so windy I was afraid I was going to blow off the mountain. Somebody was going to die, it was just so miserable. But in hindsight, it’s so amazing: the video turned out incredible, and it was beautiful.”

The more cynical among us might be tempted to write off Stirling’s dubstep-fuelled and Celtic-tinged shtick as Riverdance goes cosplay: her act looks a lot like the former, and she admits to being a great fan of dressing up to have fun. But what she’s really all about is exemplified by her reaction to the Norwegian video shoot. Not only is she willing to suffer for her art, she’s already survived the kind of adversity that might crush a gentler soul, and she did it in public.

Although she played in rock bands in her teens, Stirling is a true child of the video age, with her first posting on YouTube being the vehicle that launched her career. As she explains, one of the scouts for America’s Got Talent saw it and persuaded her to audition for the televised talent contest. She did well enough to advance to the 2010 quarterfinals, at which point judges Piers Morgan and Sharon Osbourne voted her off, adding insult to injury by saying she simply didn’t have what it would take to be a star.

“The positive side [of artistic competition] is definitely being inspired by the people around you,” Stirling says. “I was really inspired by all these people who were taking leaps of faith, trying to reach their dreams. And I was one of them, so it was inspiring to see that and just be like, ‘Well, if they’re doing it, I’m going to leap all the way. I’m going to close my eyes and throw my arms out and hope I catch something!’ But I also feel like it gave me a thick skin, because it was pretty devastating, and it definitely didn’t end in the way I wanted it to. I was humiliated, so it really made me think ‘Either I’m going to let this crush me,’ which it almost did, ‘or I need to bite the bullet and face the fact I need to work harder so that nobody ever says those things to me again. And I’m going to turn this fear into motivation.’"

Since her brusque dismissal, Stirling’s sold more than 400,000 albums in the U.S. Her eponymous debut has gone platinum in Germany and Austria, where she’s a huge star. In 2013, she inked a management deal with Lady Gaga’s chief caretaker, Troy Carter. And while she hasn’t yet hit the Canadian stadium circuit, she’s doing well enough that her upcoming Vancouver show will take place at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, official capacity 2,765.

Stirling’s unanticipated success and can-do personality have also made her a much-sought-after motivational speaker. “I especially love to speak to teenagers,” she says. “I love to be able to show that [America’s Got Talent] clip and, you know, show what the judges said to me and how harsh they were.…And then I say ‘Nobody can tell you who you are. Nobody can tell you what you can do. You are the author of your own success, and you get to write your own story.’

“If I had believed them that night, I would not be here today,” she continues. “So I just love that aspect of it. I love that it gave me a story to tell—and, you know, those hard stories make you grow.”

Lindsey Stirling plays the Queen Elizabeth Theatre next Thursday (May 21)