Glasgow Kisser
The Scotsman, 1 March 2001
By Aidan Smith
When Sharon Small was small - smaller than she is now, all curled-up and cat-like on the sofa - she had a big dream, and it came in three instalments.
"I wanted to make money, go round the world and - this is going to sound a bit woolly - reach out and touch people in some way," she explains.
"So why on earth did I become an actress?
"In this job, you've got no money for travelling and even if you had you can't go anywhere because you've got to sit by the phone, waiting for your agent to call."
But surely this cannot be Small's lot, not now that she's a star of telly primetime. She's just become a home-owner - didn't her new-found fame pay for that?
"Well, I don't want your pity because, of course, I don't deserve it but I bought my couch off another actress, my table was being thrown out by a chum, and my only other piece of furniture is a mattress for the floor. After Glasgow Kiss, I didn't do anything until the Beeb decided to put me in a cop show. So, I'm not rich. It's madness for anyone in this profession to take on a mortgage and if I don't do anything else in the next four months, I'll be out on the street."
So there you have it. A glamorous haircut, sun-kissed and feathery, like the one Small is sporting today is no reliable indicator of a glamorous life. Or am I just being seduced by the hair? Is she being a drama queen about this, only I can't see it? About everything else, she's funny and frank and feet-on-the-ground, even love. In fact, especially love. Small is 33 and single. This is OK, she says - for now. She talks a lot about love, from her first kiss to her last boyfriend, but doesn't want me getting the idea she's obsessed about it. I'm sure she's not, I say - no more than anyone else, anyway. So we talk about that cop show, The Inspector Lynley Mysteries, and I ask her to tell me about her character in this upcoming drama. She looks puzzled, and slightly disappointed.
"Oh ... I see what you mean. My TV character. I thought you wanted me to do an ad for myself for a lonely hearts column … "
The third part of her dream, the slightly woolly bit about making some kind of connection, it's starting to happen now. Millions of us watched her in, first Sunburn, the drama about holiday reps, then Glasgow Kiss, the one about football hacks. Both were easy viewing, but in a no-nonsense way we related to her, and what the parts she played had to say about family, career and, especially, love. Previously, Small has said she had "no idea" why she decided to become an actress. She doesn't add much to that now, other than acting seemed a lot more fun than becoming a trainee manager for Marks & Spencer, the option offered up by her careers teacher.
"Acting was the only thing that made me burn," she explains, sipping mineral water in a Soho hotel. "It also kind of scared me, and I liked that about it."
She was born in a tenement in Drumchapel, Glasgow. What did her father do?
"Er … next question."
She has not seen him since she was eight years old, when her parents split up. The subject is clearly still painful for her, and she doesn't answer when I ask if she would like to see her father again. Small has now lived longer in London than she did in Glasgow. She pronounces "yes" in a Scots accent and "no" in an English one. In between times, she lived in Kinghorn in Fife - her teenage years. She was happiest in Kinghorn, but retains a special fondness for Glasgow, despite its hardships for the family.
"Glasgow was tough for us, with Mum having to raise three kids on her own [she later remarried and the family expanded to five]. It puts you on a bit of a fast track, that kind of upbringing, and even as a girl I knew all about the Rangers-Celtic thing by the age of ten. There was lots of crime, and glue-sniffing round the back of the flats. We were pretty hard up, although I didn't realise that until I had to queue for free dinners at school. Suddenly everyone else was pointing at me. That's why I've always wanted to make money, because there wasn't any around when I was younger. By comparison, Kinghorn was a tranquil, touristy wee place and much safer for kids, or least it seemed so then. To earn pocket money, I worked as a waitress, serving high teas. I was always on the pull. The best times were the summer when the Glasgow boys roared into town, or when the Welshies came up for a rugby international."
So she was a bit of a raver then?
"Oh no. By about 15 I'd had my snogs, but I wasn't one for lots of boyfriends. I did go out with a policeman's son, though, and he taught me how to kiss. I was doing it like they did it in Jackie magazine, with the lips overlapping, but he got a pal to tell me I was a rubbish kisser. So we started doing it his way, which was goldfish kissing. It was only later when I realised that I'd actually been ahead of my time."
But only in the kissing department. For while semi-mythological stories about girls who had "done it" bounced around the playground like a Superball, Small waited.
"Flip, I was still a virgin right up until I left school. I was such a good girl. But if I had my time again, I'd be sooo bad! That probably doesn't make me a good role model for teenagers, but I do think I held on to my virtue just a little bit too long."
This was Small, deep in the midst of fifth-form introspection, endured with a permanent blush.
"While everybody else was listening to Tainted Love by Soft Cell and having fun, I locked myself in my bedroom and played the Carpenters for a whole year.
"I was very self-conscious about turning into a woman. I just had to pass some boys in the street and I'd get this big beamer. I couldn't speak to them, couldn't do anything with them."
So she sat in her lonely room and cursed her new bosom. And contemplated acting. As a drama-diploma hopeful, Small turned up for her audition at Kirkcaldy College in a spray-on turquoise dress, American tan tights and white stilettos; for the rest of the year-long course she wore jumble-sale greatcoats and completely contrived expressions of having already suffered for their art.
"I looked like a refugee from Tight Fit, but what did I know?" she laughs.
"I hadn't read a play or even been to the theatre."
But she got in. The same course also produced Ewan McGregor, Dougray Scott and Shirley Henderson; all of them have broken into movies quicker.
When Small reached 30, the director of her BBC Scotland loansharks drama Bumping The Odds, Rob Rohrer, said of her: "I'd like to work with Sharon again but I doubt I'll get the chance - I think she's bound for Hollywood."
She cringes when this is repeated back to her. "God, I wish he hadn't said that! I believe in karma, so I pretty much knew that put the kibosh on it happening. I said to Shirley, who was in Bumping The Odds with me: 'Bet you get there first'. And it looks like she will."
But Small is big now - proving, not for the first time in her life, that it pays to wait. Bumping The Odds was gritty; Sunburn and Glasgow Kiss were fluffy. She makes no apologies for the change of direction.
"I needed to up my profile with some popular stuff. I was going up for parts and producers were saying: 'Fine, but who is she?'"
The Inspector Lynley Mysteries is yet more primetime for her, even if she has misgivings about what is yet another cop show featuring one more chalk-and-cheese detective double-act. She plays the spiky sergeant Barbara Havers, a loose canon who seems hell-bent on being booted out of the force until she's teamed up with the posh, charming Thomas Lynley (Nathaniel Parker). If this two-parter is a hit, the first mystery, based on the novel by Elizabeth George, will be followed by more.
Small has been a late developer in the acting sense. She admits to envy in the past at the success of her peers and knows she must make the most of her breakthrough, now that it's finally arrived.
"I'm ambitious," she says. But how does she balance up the professional with the personal?
"I've always had boyfriends - in my adult life, I mean."
The last three - actor, writer, deep-sea diver - ran up 13 years between them. She's enjoying singledom, sort of.
"I can do anything I want and not have to be home for supper. I can just take off - I've been to New York, Italy, Ireland. I'm being selfish and most of the time it's great. And then I watch an old weepie on TV, dead romantic stuff, and ... "
Her voice trails away, she wipes away a pretend tear, and laughs.
"I admit it, I'm hankering after a relationship again. And I want children because I've reached the stage in my life where I'm capable of looking after them. But there just seems to be a dearth of blokes right now. And I've never been the type who gets asked out that much. My friends say I give off the wrong vibes. Then they organise dinner parties and invite one single man and afterwards I have to ask them: 'Do you know me - at all?'"
Maybe she should try the lonely hearts.
"What do you think my ad should say?"
Don't know - what does she think it should say?
"OK, here goes: 'Saddo Scot Bod In Precarious Profession. GSOH. No, DSOH - Dodgy Salary, Own House. Would Like To Meet Someone For Companionship And Babies. Must Be Able To Bring Furniture To The Relationship.' Do you think that would do the trick?"
The Inspector Lynley Mysteries is on BBC1 on 12 and 13 March.
