I Don't Fancy Hugh Either
The Daily Mail, 21 April 2002
By Steve Hendry
Has foppish film hunk Hugh Grant lost his appeal to women? Scots actress Sharon Small has admitted she loved working opposite Grant in his new hit flick About A Boy - but just didn't fancy him. She was talking just two weeks after another of Grant's film co-stars, Irish beauty Victoria Smurfit, told the Sunday Mail how she idolised Ford Kiernan's Chewin' the Fat character Ronald Villiers - and not the British heart-throb. Sharon plays Grant's ex, but says romance would never blossom in real life because he's just not her type.
The Glasgow-born actress said: "I think he's gorgeous, but I didn't go all gushy. That English floppy-haired, public school boy type isn't really my bag.
"I like rougher, stubbly, messy-haired, scruffy boys, Celtic poets like Gabriel Byrne, blokes who are less conventional looking than Hugh.
"But he was really lovely, a very good person, and we had a great laugh together."
In the movie, dubbed the male version of Bridget Jones's Diary, Sharon tells Hugh his cad lifestyle has to go. The part is not huge but it feels massive to Sharon, who has made her name in theatre and television, and is currently starring as Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers in The Inspector Lynley Mysteries on BBC1.
She said: "The part is not big, but it's quite pivotal and high profile. When I got it, it just felt like, 'Yes! I've got a film!'
"I got to tell Hugh he had to grow up and I got to do it in my own accent which was even better."
Sharon, 34, grew up in Drumchapel until she was 10 before her family moved to Kinghorn, Fife. She began acting at the renowned foundation course in theatre arts at Kirkcaldy College - now called Fife College of Further and Higher Education. Former pupils include some of Scotland's most famous names such as The Proclaimers, Dougray Scott and Ewan McGregor.
She said: "It was probably the only course around at that time, but it was a really great thing, a way of channelling your energy and seeing if you had any skills in that area."
London-based Sharon, who also starred in Sunburn with Michelle Collins and Glasgow Kiss with Iain Glen, is back in Scotland rehearsing for new play Green Fields, which opens at Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre on April 30.
She said: "There's nothing like going home."
COPYRIGHT 2002 Scottish Daily Record & Sunday.
