Small Please For A Bit Of Glamour;
Sarah Ebner Meets Lynley Mysteries Star
Liverpool Echo, 8 March 2003
By Sarah Ebner
Sharon Small is far prettier in real life than she appears to be on screen. The Scottish actress,best known for her role as the dour Barbara Havers in the Inspector Lynley Mysteries, has large green eyes, attractive, petite face and broad smile. But none of these features are particularly noticeable when she plays Havers.
"I'm supposed to look rough in Lynley," says Sharon 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.
"My character also doesn't smile very much. My mum worries that people will think I've gone downhill."
Sharon, 35, is wearing a low-cut, black top and flowing, Russian style skirt - not the kind of clothes Havers would be associated with.
"It wouldn't be true if she was really glamorous." But despite her protestations, she 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 people see you as an attractive asset. Havers isn't as attractive, so it makes me a little bit less bankable."
She says the show has been good for her critically because it's different from anything she's done before. However, the dowdy part has influenced how people see her.
"People think that's where you're at in your career. It's slightly changed what I'm seen for, which is much more character roles.The glamorous roles have not been that big in coming."
Fortunately, although romance may be off the agenda in her acting roles, it's alive and kicking in her personal life.
Sharon has been seeing an assistant director called Adam (whom she met while filming Lynley) for just under a year and, although she says she's not concerned about marriage, she admits to hearing her biological clock ticking away.
"I'd like kids," she says. "I've been so focused on working that I've kept my head down for such a long time."
Then she adds, with a smile: "I got some really good news today. A mate of mine, who's a nurse, told me you can get IVF up to 45."
Sharon may be getting ahead of herself as there's no suggestion she will even need IVF. Still, her mind is obviously working overtime when it comes to babies. Her acting career began at school in Kinghorn, a small town near Kirkcaldy in Scotland. She spent the first 10 years of her life in Glasgow, before a family caravanning holiday persuaded her parents a move to the seaside was a good idea. Her 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.
"It was quite a typical working class, Scottish upbringing, a close family, but not lots of money around."
"I was very proud of being from a working class background but I've been burnt when I've talked about it. People have written that it was tragic, awful start and it wasn't."
She left Scotland in 1986 to study at the Mountview theatre school in north London and has been based in London ever since. Her parents, sister and three brothers still live in or near Kinghorn, but she doesn't get up to see them as often as she should. However, she is going back up to Scotland shortly to film a new movie called Natural History, which stars Emily Mortimer. Sharon plays a woman who works in the local fish shop and befriends Mortimer. The film is quite a change from her last appearance on the big screen. She had a small role in the box office hit About A Boy, with Hugh Grant, and really enjoyed the experience.
"This was my first big proper feature and I walked on and couldn't believe I was there," she says. But it's an experience she would like to repeat.
"Definitely," she says enthusiastically. "You get time to think about what you'regoing to do and you don't get that in television."
Next up for Sharon is a holiday to Morocco with her boyfriend. She then returns to start filming Natural History. Everything, it seems, is clicking into place.
"I'm really looking forward to doing this film and I've got a holiday coming up and someone who loves me," she says, with a slightly bashful smile.
Then she smiles more broadly, before concluding: "I'm happy."
The Inspector Lynley Mysteries start on Monday, March 10, on BBC1.
Copyright 2003 Liverpool Echo.
