Out to lunch

After a break from TV, Cold Feet star Helen Baxendale is back in a one-off romantic comedy. Daphne Lockyer finds out what she's been up to.

Helen Baxendale, 34, is best known for her roles in Friends and Cold Feet . Later this year, she's in a romantic comedy, The Only Boy For Me , on ITV. Helen lives in London with partner, actor/producer David Elliot, and their children Nell, six and Eric, three.

What lured you back to TV?

A project I couldn't resist. It's a modern-day love story that has tons of humour and tons of heart. Plus, most of it was filmed in Twickenham - just round the corner from where I live!

Is it important for you these days to stay close to home?

Yes, it is. For six years, when we were making Cold Feet , I would up sticks and go to Manchester for six months of the year. But now that I have nursery and school-age children who can't travel with me, I don't want to be seperated from them for any serious length of time. It means turning work down but I'm pretty good at being out of work.

Not that you're exactly one to put your feet up, Helen...

No, I'm not an idle person at all. At the moment, I'm discovering whether I have any talent as a screenwriter and I'm adapting a little book (Dutch author Willem Elsschot's novel Cheese, webmaster's note) that I discovered and bought the rights to.

Have you enjoyed getting back to your day job?

Yes, I have. It was bloody hard work being back on telly, but I loved it. I found it energy-giving, and exciting. The great thing about having a break is that you can reconnect with all the things you love about acting in the first place. In a long-running series, acting can start to feel like a job. And that's precisely what it isn't. It's creative. It's a privilege.

Anything you miss about those Cold Feet years?

Yes, of course, lots of things. Especially the people; by which I mean not just the cast, but everyone that worked on the show. It was really like family. The friendships that I made with people like Fay Ripley, Hermione Norris and Jimmy Nesbitt (who played my partner, Adam) reflect that. There's a downside to long-running shows because they can become a bit of a treadmill. But if I had to be in one, then I'm glad that it was Cold Feet . It was a brilliant series and I'm proud to have been part of it.

Anything you don't miss?

The upheaval to my life and the level of fame that came, not just with Cold Feet , but with my stint on Friends . At one point the interest was so intense that reporters were knocking on my parents' door in Yorkshire. My partner, David, was followed around in cars and photographers were trying to take pictures of my children, which I think is beyond the pale. At those times I've thought, "if this is what's involved, my ambition stops here. I don't want to be an actress." Fortunately, it all seemed to calm down and now I can go to the supermarket quite happily. I'm sure there are many good things about being rich and well-known. But having had a tiny glimpse of it, I prefer what everybody else has. Anonymity.

Not just for yourself but for your children?

Absolutely. When I'm asked about the kids, I try all kinds of avoidance tactics to protect them. Obviously, my children do exist. They're lovely and I adore them. But I want their lives to be their own and I want them to have the kind of happy, sunny childhood that I had myself.

Tell us about that childhood.

I grew up in a little village just outside Lichfield in Staffordshire. My mum was a teacher, my dad was (and still is) a schools' inspector. We had nothing to do with the theatre, but my younger sister, Katie (who's now a brilliant screenwriter) and I used to put on plays and circuses in the garden. I also did ballet, which was where I became hooked on performing.

Are you tempted to tie the knot with David?

I don't see the point of us marrying, really, Neither of us is religious and the only reason would be becaue of inheritance tax or something unromantic. I feel married in all the important ways.

Does it help that David is in the same business?

Well, there is a certain understanding between us. During The Only Boy For Me , for example, there are love scenes that might be difficult to explain to someone outside the business. But David and I met in a play where we had a love scene together and we both know that more than anything else they're embarrassing.

[Back to archive]

Finding her feet

Despite the best-forgotten Friends career "blip", Helen Baxendale still reigns as the queen of thirtysomething drama. Tim de Lisle joins her as she prepares for a new series of the award-winning Cold Feet.

It's a sunny afternoon in Manchester, and Helen Baxendale is welcoming me into her home. A slight, stylish figure in a navy dress, stone-coloured mac, and slinky suede boots, she leads the way down the hall to the kitchen. There are just a few problems. The walls are made of plywood, the stairs lead nowhere, and the location is unusual - inside a warehouse in Salford. I'm on the set of Cold Feet, the ITV comedy-drama about three thirtysomething couples, and this is the place that Helen's character, Rachel, calls home - at least when she hasn't just had a row with her boyfriend, Adam. Helen is to give me a guided tour of the set while the crew break for lunch, but it's taken us a while to get this far.

All morning, while other members of the cast have been coming over for a chat, Helen has been visible only in the background, like the spear-carrier she never was. For an hour, she was in the make-up truck (it takes time to create the no-frills glamour that Cold Feet favours), offering distant spotlit glimpses of her distinctive, Roman profile. Then she was pacing the car park, talking on a mobile which turned out not to be hers because she doesn't believe in them. And then there was lunch: as she offered a hand for me to shake, her other hand was holding a bowl full of banana split.

Now, at last, she is ready to talk. Or snuffle. She has a cold. But at least she's not suffering from self-pity. "Sorry, it'll really get on your nerves," she says, glancing at my tape recorder. "Luckily I'm not doing much today. Actually, it might make my voice a bit more gravelly and interesting." She laughs - a snuffly, uncomplicated, childlike chuckle.

"This is our house, Adam and Rachel's house. Oh!" There's one thing she has forgotten. When the main filming lights are switched off, the place is pitch dark. "Sorry about that." What she lacks in forward planning, she makes up in politeness.

I can't actually see her, but I can hear her boots clomping away over the floorboards. "Come and see something with light on it in. This is my friends' house, Karen and David's. Very nice, very posh. I'm very good friends with Karen, so I often come round here to cry and things."

The boots clomp again. Like a homing pigeon, she is heading back to her own place. "I'll show you our bedroom." She stumbles and I stumble too. It's like being 15 again, without the fun bits.

Somehow we reach the bedroom without serious injury. "This is quite hilarious too. Each year when we come back there's this dressing-table full of make-up which I never actually use, which really makes me laugh. I've certainly never used it and I've certainly never seen Rachel use it" - interesting choice of words - "but it's always there and it makes you feel very at home."

She pauses outside the house, casting her mind back to the start of Cold Feet, four years ago (and two years before she landed the role of Ross' English wife Emily in international hit comedy Friends). She was 26, a nice middle-class girl from Staffordshire with an intriguing face who had made it big in her first role out of drama school in Bristol, playing the go-getting, man-eating and occasionally ball-breaking Dr Claire Maitland in the BBC's Cardiac Arrest.

"I remember going to meet the producers, Declan Lowney and Christine Langan. Christine was a really young woman, full of energy. I remember thinking, 'God these are really good people to work with'. And when I saw the script, I was surprised by how good it was. But I really didn't expect it would have such a huge life."

She leads the way back to make-up, where there are a few chairs, and lights. The make-up artisk says she'll do Helen's hair in a few minutes. "What, am I needed for a different scene after this?" She gasps. "Oh bugger. Oh bugger. I thought we'd done them both." Here tone is more exasperated than angry. Even when she swears, she does so politely.

Earlier, I had asked her two closest co-stars, Jimmy Nesbitt (who plays Adam) and Hermione Norris (Karen), to describe her. These two, like many a boyfriend and a best friend in real life, have nothing in common but the person whose affections they share. Nesbitt is Irish, cheeky and garrulous. Norris is English, shy and dry. But ask them about Helen and they both make virtually the same point. "The thing about Helen," Nesbitt says, "is she's daft. Scatty."

Then I ask. "What's different about Helen?" Norris repeats the question slowly and thoughtfully then answers, "She's mad!"

To me, Helen seemed fairly sorted: she gave clear, direct answers, and was coping with the modern mother's juggling act, sharing childcare with her man at weekends and her mum during the week. She has a two-year-old daughter, Nell Marmalade, by the actor-producer David Elliot. He stays at the family home in north London during the week while Nell joins Helen in a rented house in the country near Manchester. Together, she and Elliot also run a production company, Shooting Pictures. One of its upcoming projects is a drama scripted by Helen's sister Kate, who also writes BBC football drama Playing the Field. Helen has joked that, since having Nell Marmalade, her life is full of gardening and books. "Going out to the video shop is a real night out for me."

When Cold Feet began, Helen was the face that launched a thousand single dramas; rare was the Screen One, or indeed Two, in which she didn't star. At first she thought Cold Feet was a one-off too. In a sense it was, in that it was a pilot, a testing of the water for a possible series. "I didn't really know what a pilot was," she admits.

Made by Granada in 1996, that first programme wasn't shown until the next year, and then it got delayed (because the motor racing overran) and drew only four million viewers. Figures like that are fine on BBC2 or Channel 4, but close to a flop on ITV. It was repeated, "and even the repeat didn't do that well," according to the show's own press officer.

What saved it was the reviews, which were excellent, and an unexpected award, the Golden Rose at the Montreux TV festival. The first series of a six one-hour programmes in autumn 1998 started at seven million viewers, rising to eight million.

Now an intelligent, funny and reasonably realistic programme, with top-class actors and high production values, Cold Feet draws nearly ten million people on a Sunday night.

In a way, the show changed the history of ITV, at a time of corporate mergers, creative dumbing-down, and heavy flak. Britain's most populist channel can now cope with comedies that don't have canned laughter. Where once there were bubblegum sitcoms, now there are at least a few attempts at wit and flair.

A litter of copycats has been born (ITV's Metropolis with Louise Lombard and Matthew Rhys, and BBC's Hearts and Bones with Dervla Kirwan and Amanda Holden), although none of them are quite like the original. One day, we will sit in our armchairs, flicking between 300 channels available, and mutter that they don't make 'em like Cold Feet any more.

Helen Baxendale is only one of six lead actors in the show, and doesn't think of herself as the star. Once paid more than the others, she is now on the same fee as them. (Her salary hasn't gone down, it's just gone up less than theirs; the work is "much, much" better paid than the films she has done.) But she has been central to its success.

Rachel is the emotional heart of the story, the character we are most likely to root for. The creator of the series, Mike Bullen, gives Helen the credit for this. "That character is the least developed character on the page, because she was conceived as the ideal girlfriend. And she could be someone who you took against - she's cheated on her boyfriend with her ex-husband, who she's hadn't bothered to tell him about, and she's had an abortion without consulting him.

"But because it's Helen, you don't take against her at all. She's a very underrated actress, because she doesn't appear to do much at all, but if you know what's gone into a scene, you know what she's doing in it, and she's hiding the mechanics well, but her strength is to make it absolutely believable and ordinary. She's everywoman."

Except to look at. Television normally favours women with sweet, neat, regular features, such as Anna Friel or Amanda Holden, or those who are all mouth and cleavage - Denise van Outen or Samantha Janus. Helen Baxendale is different. Her beauty is all her own. Her face is to conventional good looks what the Sydney Opera House is to conventional nice buildings. Everything is curved: formidable cheekbones, rosebud mouth, exquisite small ears framed by C-shaped hanks of hair, and - let's make no bones about it - a hook nose. It's a nice one, the kind that could give hook noses a good name.

Its owner prefers to call it pointy, and regards it as a friend. "My pointy nose and frightening cheekbones have got me a lot of parts," she said recently. "People often think that I might be quite scary. They don't start fights with me in pubs."

That quality didn't just get her the part of Dr Maitland, it also got her into probably the biggest TV comedy of our time: Friends. She was Emily, the upper-class English girl that Ross, in one of his many moments of madness, married. It was a bit of a nothing role - posh without spice, and, worse, without jokes. Helen was pregnant and lonely in Los Angeles, which she found unreal and soulless. She used the word "blip" to describe this chapter in her career and made some mildly sardonic remarks about the cast (while also calling them "excellent comedians").

Matt LeBlanc, who plays Joey, shot back swiftly: "I don't think anyone had heard of Helen Baxendale until she was in Friends. She bit the hand that fed her. Bad dog."

I ask if she regrets doing Friends. She prefers not to discuss it. I try again. What did she learn from it? "That it's always best to be bold. That big is not always beautiful.

There have been other blips. She has made three feature films in the past three years and two of them have bombed.

Even Helen admits that Macbeth, in which she played Lady Macbeth opposite Jason Connery wasn't very good. However, she believes that Ordinary Decent Criminal, where she played one of two Irish sisters involved bigamously with Dublin gangster Martin Cahill (Kevin Spacey), deserved better treatment from the critics.

Time will tell what will become of the third movie, Canadian art-house film Dead By Monday, due out late this autumn. The premise is certainly interesting. It's a dark romantic comedy in which Helen plays a woman widowed by her young husband after a rock climbing accident, only to discover that he was having an affair and had a baby with another woman.

Helen's character Julie falls into a deep depression and winds up in a mental hospital where she befriends a writer (played by Tom and Viv's Tim Dutton). She persuades him to enter into a suicide pact with her. They plan to jump off Niagara Falls together but somehow love gets in the way.

"That was very freeing," Helen says of the Toronto-based film. "I always feel more at ease playing somebody very different from me."

At time of writing Helen is in negotiations to join a television revival of Sue Townsend's Adrian Mole. Playing Pandora, Mole's first, and never-forgotten girlfriend could be another huge role for the star.

Helen discusses the downs - apart from Friends - as readily as the ups. "She's a rarity," says Hermione Norris. "She is completely her own person and operates in her own orbit, and has kind of a childlike delight. A childlike joy and angle on things." She's very unexcited by her fame, Jimmy Nesbitt says, adding: [She's] aware of how privileged and lucky we are. She's in no way worthy - not actory or luvvy. I'd love to be able to say that she's a total nightmare to work with but she's not. She's very special. She's the best actress I've played opposite."

To me, she is a healthy mixture of candour and watchfulness. She reveals vulnerablities that might surprise any viewers who still think of her as Dr Maitland. "I still feel a little intimidated by the whole idea of doing comedy," she says. "I think I've learnt a lot, but I still get panic attacks."

She tries to play Cold Feet as drama, not comedy ("Make it as real as possible"), and is fiercely proud of the programme, but still unsure about her performance. "Acting is such a balance," she says. "I'll start a job and think, 'I must try to do less and be more internalised', then I think, 'Oh my God, I'm so wooden'. It's a constant balance. It's different for everybody and it sounds a bit wanky. I don't know how to do it, that's the truth."

She laughs that carefree laugh again. "I actually find playing Rachel really hard, I think because the character is very close to me. I might as well be her, really. Although lots of different things have happened in our lives, we're basically very similar."

Maybe she doesn't like her character in Cold Feet very much? "I do like her," she replies, before admitting, that she is slightly frustrated by Rachel, though.

"To me, acting is easier if you can give yourself a tool to grasp on to, something stupid like an accent or something...I find it the most constricting thing [playing Rachel], because, in the end, it's very difficult to know yourself. Equally, I've learnt a lot about being natural and truthful. Then I feel I forget it again. It's a strange one, acting."

[Back to archive]

Ross' English Rose

British actress Helen Baxendale could be the one to take Friends' Ross up the aisle. She's also set to become a tv detective in An Unsuitable Job For A Woman. Eileen Condon finds out how she's coping with new friends and fame.

Helen Baxendale is a woman who has plenty of friends. First of all there are the ones who think she is about to be one of the leading actresses of her generation.

Then there are the ones who believe her performance in the UK detective series, An Unsuitable Job For A Woman, is as good as Helen Mirren's in Prime Suspect.

Lastly, and by no means least, there are the Friends themselves, who have welcomed the British actress into their tight knit cast as the woman rumoured to whisk Ross (David Schwimmer) up the aisle.

"I have been fantastically lucky," says the ever modest Baxendale. "I was in the States on holiday when the Friends' people asked me to audition. I went along, read some of the scripts and that was it. They wanted me to start straight away. Amazing good luck really."

Of course, it is more than just luck. Helen won her much coveted Friends role because she is rapidly becoming one of the most versatile young actresses around at the moment.

Australia will soon bear witness to her talent. Before she sweeps Ross off his feet, Channel Nine will screen tv crime thriller, An Unsuitable Job For A Woman. Based on a novel by PD James, Helen stars as graduate Cordelia Gray who ends up running her own detective agency.

The series has been a massive hit in Britain but despite winning much acclaim as the feisty young private eye, Helen has a guilty admission to make.

"I don't actually like crime fiction, I don't read it," she confesses. "But when I read the PD James book, I had a very pleasant surprise. It was a good job really because I had to meet the author before I got the part."

The role of Cordelia Gray followed hot on the heels of another big success - the UK medical drama Cardiac Arrest in which she played raunchy doctor Claire Maitland.

Her portrayal as a sexually athletic medic set pulses racing among British tv audiences and quickly earned her a sex symbol tag - somethings she doesn't mind at all.

"If someone wants to call me a sex bomb they can go right ahead and do it," she laughs. "After all, it's just an image, totally manufactured. I know what I'm really like, which isn't glamorous at all."

"It's better that people say good things about you. I just don't really believe any of it. You mustn't forget that they're saying those things about something that isn't real. It's all make believe. Any reputation you have is based on a handful of people saying 'We thought that was good.' So as long as you remember that, you have a better chance of survival."

Because of her versatility, Helen is an actress who is extremely hard to pigeon-hole and she believes that's the secret of staying on top in a notoriously fickle profession.

"You can be flavour of the month one minute and the next everyone's forgotten you. If you believe that success is certain you are bound to fall on your face," she says.

"You have to take each day as it comes, appreciate you're very lucky while it's happening and try not to get it all out of proportion. You also have to take a lot with a pinch of salt. Acting is not the be-all and end-all of our lives. I love my job but there are loads of other things I consider more worthwhile."

One of those those is her impending role as a real life parent. She and partner David Elliot - also an actor - are expecting their first baby later this year.

The pregnancy has scriptwriters for An Unsuitable Job For A Woman busily writing it into the plot.

Meanwhile, although Helen reveals her new found Friends have been supportive over her pregnancy, she won't say if it will be built into future episodes of the show.

Ross gets married AND becomes a father again? Helen Baxendale is keeping firmly mum.

[Back to archive]

Manhattan Transfer

Helen Baxendale doesn't like to make plans, but as Eddie Taylor discovers, she doesn't need to.

There's more to Helen Baxendale than a haircut. The woman responsible for stealing doe-eyed Ross away from the immaculately coiffured Rachel can look forward to a career pleasingly devoid of shampoo commercials. Not that her hair isn't up to it, but her only fly-away concern of late have been crossing the Atlantic to star in the most successful comedy in American television history – Friends.

Then when she's not sipping lattes at the chi-chi Manhattan café, Central Perk, she's been dominating the autumn schedules as another love-smitten Rachel in Cold Feet or making a case-in-point as TV's most alluring detective, Cordelia Gray in An Unsuitable Job For A Woman. And now there's the movie – An Ordinary Decent Criminal – Helen's first major feature film and the chance to star opposite screen-dynamo, Kevin Spacey.

“It's all incredibly fortuitous,” says Helen who (stylists take note) currently sports a neat bob. “I suppose good work breeds good work; once you are in something successful people want to be around you and the offers come in. But I have never had a plan. I've just always wanted to do good things.”

Her credits speak for themselves. From 1994's Cardiac Arrest in which she played cool, detached Claire Maitland, Baxendale has progressed effortlessly, relentlessly even, through a host of prime-time slots such as The Investigator and the BAFTA-winning Crossing The Floor to finding herself in Friends , a show where guest stars usually require an extra dressing room for their personal publicist, cook and guru.

“I must have some ambition somewhere,” she smiles, “but I've never seen myself taking certain steps to attain an ultimate goal. I went with a new agent about a year ago, Sue Latimer, with the expressed desire of doing more film work and that is the most planned move I've probably taken. But then came the Friends thing…”

That Friends thing? Don't you mean one of the most coveted roles on the planet? “You know, it doesn't ever feel like it's me doing this half the time,” she frowns. “I can't even see Friends as part of my life. I'd never been to America before, and I've not been since: it's like a mini time-capsule. It was all very strange, I've never experiences anything like it before.”

Friends was, to state the obvious, a wonderful opportunity for the unshakeably modest Baxendale. But successful formulas aren't always the most forgiving of environments, not least when you are charged with undermining one of the principal plot lines.

“You are kind of setting yourself up for a fall going in there….the programme is so popular and everyone wants Rachel to be with Ross. But it is both a no-win situation and a huge-win situation. It puts you in another bracket completely, all of a sudden people in America will go ‘Oh yes, her'.

“But I think it is very difficult to excel in that kind of setting. Friends is a very slick operation, knows what it is and it work brilliantly. It is very difficult to go in and try make your mark and be English. The show is so American, the writers are very quick-witted Jewish New Yorkers, and you wonder how well they write for another voice.”

Whatever us Brits thought about gags like “If it wasn't for us, you lot would all be speaking German” – and we thought Chandler never got a duff line – the Americans couldn't get enough of Emily and her burgeoning affair with the puppy-faced palaeontologist. She's even had mail from ardent fans proclaiming she breathed new life into the series. “I don't know how true that is!” she says, allowing herself the smallest of grins. “But as I was back in England when it was screened, I honestly have no idea how I was received. To be honest, in terms of my career it doesn't really matter what they think of me. I'm not that bothered. I just worry about being crap…”

Just as Caprice probably worries about her bad side. Further proof of Helen's talents, was ITV's Cold Feet , one of the TV successes of the year, which overcame pre-release prejudices to earn a large, loyal following. “It got a rough ride from the broadsheets before it came out, which I thought was peculiar. I thought it was interesting and different. The pilot won the Golden Rose at Montreux and the viewing figures showed it had a definite voice. I am doing more for a start.”

The big screen, however, appears to be the medium which will probably preoccupy Helen over the next few years. Within weeks of giving birth to her first child, Nell, she made An Ordinary Decent Criminal , an Irish comedy-drama with Spacey, ,who definitely wasn't a disappointment.

“It was amazing working alongside someone of that calibre. Kevin is such a brilliant actor. You meet him, and he sort of looks under his eyebrows at you, and you think ‘Oh my God, you're so charismatic I can't even look at you.' You know there is quite a lot going on in there.”

And how did the North Dublin accent go? “It was very hard! A lot of the time you feel liberated by an accent, I certainly do, and I don't get to use them enough. I'm usually very good, but this was tough.” And Kevin's? “Er, I'd say he found it as difficult as the rest of us…”

With such diplomacy, it's easy to see why she was so popular at Central Perk, and no doubt Gunther the hostile barman will be keeping her espresso warm. But for how long? As yet there are no plans for her to return to Ross's side, though like so many others, she admits: “It would be brilliant to work in Hollywood .” Of course she couldn't live there, and reaffirms this several times by stating England will always be home. “Oh God, I couldn't see my life being in LA, somewhere hot by the sea, having a fantastic time…it's not me!”

So all those hairdressers who have been kept awake by the impending threat of “The Helen”, surpassing “The Rachel” can rest easy. Helen Baxendale's career isn't going to rest in the hands of a stylist.

[Back to archive]

”It's not me who's sexy. It's the fact I happen to have taken off my top on TV”

Being a sex symbol is an unsuitable job for a modest actress, says Helen Baxendale. But her looks have won her a series of strong, assertive roles leading to her latest, a PD James investigator.

A car park on the outskirts of Croydon, Surry, on a wet Wednesday evening is not perhaps the most romantic place to meet a sexy 27-year-old woman described as “TV's most desirable actress”, but this is a location for An Unsuitable Job for a Woman , an adaptation of a PD James novel, in which she plays a sassy private detective. “Sexy? Me?” she snorts. “It's not me who's sexy. It's the fact I happen to have taken off my top on TV, and the parts I've played, which are mostly women who know what they want and ask for it – that's sexy in a way, I suppose. I'm bloody happy that people wish to think of me as sexy, but it's really quite pathetic. I sometimes feel I'm too ‘normal' to be an actress. It's peculiar to be thought of as something you're not just because you've played a part on telly.”

For four years she was Dr Claire Maitland in Cardiac Arrest¸ which allowed her to develop a niche for “strong” women, as well as a saucy reputation. The was the nude lesbian scene in The Investigator , in which she played an army officer. “I didn't worry about that. I took the part because television has a lot of power and often doesn't say anything worth while, so it's a privilege occasionally to be in a drama that makes a point. Also I'm not stupid – it seemed a good antidote to mainstream stuff like An Unsuitable Job for a Woman .” Then in Truth or Dare she was a lawyer who, within the first few minutes, was in a topless clinch with a male collegue. “The fuss about that really got on my nerves. I'd worked bloody hard and was very proud – often I'm not proud of my acting – and the only thing most papers mentioned was ‘Sexy Dr Claire gets her tits out.' I thought, ‘Never again.' But then you're offered a part where they want a quick flash and the director says it has integrity and is important to the story. I don't think it ever is really. You can't be risqué, any more, It's all been done.” It's not true, she adds, that it is only women who are obliged to disrobe. “I always ask, ‘What about the men?' In Cardiac Arrest no woman ever showed her breasts. It was all male bottoms. That was the policy – in order to be contrary.” Anyway, it's her face that is her fortune, she believes. “It's not conventionally pretty – my nose is different to other actresses' – but it seems to denote someone who knows what they're doing and is determined. I look as if I'm plotting, even when I'm just thinking about my dinner. I believe I'd be good at playing lighter, more daffy parts, It's pathetic that people think you're serious and intelligent if you're a brunette with a pale complexion and a slightly hooked nose, or that you can't be blond and have a brain.

“It seems fairly damned ludicrous to me because I don't conduct myself as a strong, business-type woman. I'm forgetful, hugely disorganised and never know where I'm going form moment to moment. It's all a con trick. I don't feel it at this second but I have the capacity to be hugely devious. I pull the wool over people's eyes the whole time in my job and I've been so lucky to get parts that have created a bit of a niche for me. It wasn't any scheming career move. It just happened, and I always think I'm about to be found out.”

At first, she says, she didn't think she'd be able to play the part of Claire Maitland. “I was 22, and incredibly unlike her. She was so in control, pushy clever and could always answer back. I'm not particularly timid, but I'm not ball-breaking, and I think I overacted the part at first. After a while you learn from the character and realise you share certain characteristics. I was able to summon up confidence and strength so now, when I need it, I go into my Claire mode. I suppose I do have a determined streak, but I've never been aggressively pushy. I quite like being a bit older, I've become less bothered, less desperate to please. I was determined to prove things to myself, but now I realise that if something doesn't work out, I won't die.” The one drawback of Cardiac Arrest is that she became a hypochondriac. “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. You'd read medical books and be convinces you had an arachnoid haemorrhage whenever you had a headache.”

There is no danger of identifying to much with Cordelia Gray in An Unsuitable Job for a Woman , who takes over a ramshackle investigation agency after her boss commits suicide. “I wouldn't choose to be a private detective in a grotty old place in London , not doing very well. It's an unsuitable job for anyone, particularly Cordelia because she's a bright cerebral woman and the job that has landed in her lap is really seedy. But I'm enjoying doing it. Although you become punch drunk after such a long shoot, it's quite good fun flailing around with a gun and driving fast cars.” She is an actress almost by accident, having wanted desperately to be a ballet dancer. Born in Yorkshire , she grew up near Lichfield , Staffordshire (there are still traces of a Brummie accent), where her father was a school inspector and her mother a teacher. “Ballet is the perfect art form, precise and exact. I did very well in exams and competitions. I loved the discipline of going to lessons six times a week, sweating my guts out, feeling fit, able to move through the air, and returning absolutely knackered. My mum didn't want me to do it because she knew it would be a bloody awful life and thought I was too clever to waste my brain on ballet. She saw how demanding and damaging it can be – and your prospects are fairly short-lived even if you are successful. But both my parents were wonderful, the best in the world, and gave me every opportunity to do whatever I want, for which I will always be grateful. Looking back, I think ballet training is a bit mad and cruel. I became obsessive, but at 16 I realised I wasn't good enough. I was gutted but made up my mind, after about a month, I'd do something else. I was determined to be good at whatever it was. I'm bloody stubborn. I'm a Yorkshire woman.”

She thought of becoming a dancer on a cruise ship. “I wanted to see the world, but the auditions depressed the life out of me. It was a total waste of thy years I had spent refining my art. I didn't put my heart and soul into being a ballet dancer to shake my sprangled backside and be sexy, sexy. It was so tacky. So I applied to the Bristol Old Vic drama school. Acting had similarities to dancing: it wasn't ‘normal' and I didn't have to go to an office. Ego was involved – I don't believe any actor who says they don't do it for their ego – but I actually like the creative process now. At the time I wasn't really ambitious. I seemed to be pretty rubbish compared to the other students. I never thought I'd have a career as an actress – just a few theatre jobs if I was lucky, but when I left I thought, ‘Bloody hell, I can do this and quite like it. So why not go for it?' I don't think people take much notice of actresses, but you do have to use your brain to a certain extent. It's a creative process, if you want it to be, but my trouble is I have such a low boredom threshold it's sad. I go off at tangents, creating my own little world, thinking everything is going to be fantastic. I also know I have every possibility of being bad as well as good. That's a worrying thought, but it keeps you alive. The trouble is you don't always know if something's not working. It's only when you look at it later you wonder what the bloody hell you were doing. I don't watch much telly now, although when I was a child I adored it and learned so much. Acting may have ruined it for me. Now I know how they make programmes, I don't want to watch. Or I may look at a drama and wonder why I didn't get a particular part, as well as sometimes thinking, ‘Thank God I didn't.' When I started acting I did a lot of theatre work and really enjoyed it, but now I'm at the stage where I don't want to travel all over the country, and I'd be bored with long runs. That's too much like work. And I don't want to be bad in the theatre again, I have been – either the play wasn't right, or I wasn't – and it's like a bloody life sentence when you have to go in front of five people and a dog – and then one of them walks out at the interval.”

She lives a quiet life (“I don't go to lots of parties or mix with many other actors”) in north London with an actor she asks me not to name. “We're very happy but I'm one of those ‘new' people who is not really bothered about marriage. There are loads of things I want to do. My mind skips about a lot, and I feel my brain stopped working when I finished my A-levels. I'd like to be a better actress, learn a language or live in a different country. Every time I return from abroad I wonder what the hell I'm doing here. Of course acting can send you a bit batty. It's such an unstable job, and not good for your health. You can believe it's real life when it's not. It's important to take time to live as everyone else, to make your own tea, drive yourself around. When you're filming you're looked after rather well and you can begin to expect it, take advantage and become a prat. You have to keep an eye on yourself. I've been bloody lucky, and I've made the most of it. I hope.”

The bleak Croydon night closes in, and it is time to return to filming. She says she feels a little discontinued from reality. “I'm living in a bubble which doesn't mix with anything else, and I find that frustrating. Acting is really not the most important thing in my life but you have to believe it is in order to have the strength and determination to get over the demands on your mind and body. A job like this is pretty knackering in every way and there are times when I think I should be at home with my family or going to a day job like my friends. That would be ‘normal'. But when I don't work, I can't wait to go back and be creative. But now, when I've been at it for a long time I need to fill up on my life. I might as well be on Mars.” Or in Croydon.

[Back to archive]