Small's Big Role
ic SouthLondon, 2004
By Sarah Ebner, The Pulse
SHARON SMALL is far prettier in real life than she appears to be on screen. The Scottish actress, best known now for her role as the dour Barbara Havers in the Inspector Lynley Mysteries, has large green eyes, an attractive, petite face and a broad smile. But none of these features is particularly noticeable when she plays Havers.
"I'm supposed to look rough in Lynley," says Small with a slight grimace. "I fought this year for a tiny bit of make-up, but there's not really much on - I've not got eye shadow or anything to accentuate my features and I'm not even supposed to be lit nicely. My character also doesn't smile very much, and what lights up people's faces is often a smile."
Small, who is 35, is wearing a low-cut, black top and flowing, Russian-style skirt - not the kind of clothes Havers would be associated with.
"I embrace what she's like," says Small. "It wouldn't be true if she was really glamorous."
But despite her protestations, Small is obviously a touch concerned about the effect Lynley has had on her professional life.
"Nothing in my career has really springboarded me," she says. "I suppose Glasgow Kiss [in which she starred opposite Iain Glen] did a lot because it was a more glamorous role and that does push you forward because people see you as an attractive asset. Havers isn't as attractive, so it makes me a little bit less bankable."
Small says the show has been good for her critically because it's different from anything she's done before. However, she adds that the dowdy part has influenced how people see her.
"People think that's where you're at in your career," she says. "And it's slightly changed what I'm seen for, which is much more character roles. The glamorous roles haven't been that big in coming, it's not the romantic stuff any more."
Her acting career began at school in Kinghorn, a small town near Kirkcaldy in Scotland. She had spent the first 10 years of her life in Glasgow, before a family caravanning holiday persuaded her parents that a move to the seaside was a good idea. Small's background - her mum was a housewife and her dad a salesman - was decidedly working-class, but she's now wary of talking about it in too much detail.
"I'm proud of being from a working-class background but, in the past, I've been burnt when I've talked about it," she says. "People have written that it was an awful start. It wasn't."
She left Scotland in 1986 but is going back up there shortly to film a new movie called Natural History, which stars Emily Mortimer. Small plays a woman who works in the local fish shop and befriends Mortimer.
