Untitled Document

Sharon Small Shows Her Ugly Side

Daily Record (Glasgow, Scotland), 10 March 2001

By Graham Whitcroft

Stunning Scots actress Sharon Small has just won the role of an unlovely, fat detective. Some mistake, surely?

THERE'S nothing to her, she's a slip of a girl, petite and pretty with elfin features and that cheeky smile. So how did Sharon Small manage to land the role of a fat, ugly crimefighter?

It's easy for regular faces on TV to be typecast, but not this one. With roles as diverse as holiday rep Carol in Sunburn, city slicker Cara in Glasgow Kiss and now Sergeant Barbara Havers in The Inspector Lynley Mysteries, Glasgow-born Sharon is quickly compiling a CV which takes most actresses years to achieve.

Sharon isn't the first name which springs to mind to play the overweight, decidedly unattractive Havers for her latest role with Nat Parker in Elizabeth George's The Inspector Lynley Mysteries. In fact, she's probably one of the last. It was her acting ability that got her the part, despite the fact that as the show's producer, Ruth Baumgarten admits Sharon looks nothing at all like Havers.

"We had every intention of casting close to the physical type of Havers in the books," says Ruth. "But in the end Sharon walked in and bagged the role, even though she looks nothing like the description. She just captured that sense of a character who's completely unloved."

In A Great Deliverance, the first of the mysteries, Sharon's character is sent to North Yorkshire to help solve the brutal murder of a farmer. He leaves behind a secret past and plenty of potential suspects. After wearing lots of make-up and sexy clothes in her last role as the power-suited city slicker Cara in last summer's drama Glasgow Kiss, Sharon, 33, admits she enjoyed the contrasting challenge of Havers, especially the dressing down side of it.

"It was a relief not to be under pressure to look good, especially after Glasgow Kiss," she says. "This was a complete contrast. With Havers the clothes were hideous, all mismatched colours and shapeless, the kind of clothes you can hide in. Can I please emphasise that none of them were mine.

"I'd like to say that make-up made me look really rough but all they did was skew-whiff my hair - the rest was all my own work. I've got quite sharp features so it's easy for me to look grumpy. If you allow yourself to collapse and to stop trying, you soon start looking miserable.

"It made me think that attractiveness really does mainly come from inside you, the sort of sparkle that you give out. I once caught sight of myself in the mirror when I was in character as Havers and, God, did I look awful?

"Havers is never going to be the touchy-feely type, especially as she goes into the job with Lynley convinced she's about to lose her job. So he's on the receiving end of all her resentment and aggression although she does start to loosen up a bit in the story."

Winning a role against the odds is getting to be a bit of a habit for the Scottish actress. Take Glasgow Kiss, for example, which ended up giving Sharon her first major starring TV role as the sexy Scottish-Italian woman Cara - but only after the most unlikely of beginnings.

"I never thought I'd get that part, no way," smiles Sharon. "For a start when I read for it my hair was sunbleached from filming Sunburn abroad. I also had freckles so I didn't look Italian at all, which is what the part required."

But if Sharon thought her looks were against her that day, so it seemed was nearly everything else.

"It was all a bit frantic I remember," she says. "I'd just rushed back from doing Sunburn in Portugal and grabbed a few hours sleep before the audition. On the way there I left my purse in the back of a taxi. So I had to dump my bag and run after it, fortunately the cab stopped at a set of traffic lights and I got the purse back.

"I jogged back to the audition laughing my head off. Then from being casually dressed in jeans and a T-shirt I was suddenly asked to change into a smart power suit and read for the part. After all that had happened that day I don't think I had the energy to be nervous for the audition - and somehow I got the part, although I doubt I would if anyone had seen me running after that taxi."

But if that experience was slightly nerve-racking, it was nothing compared with how she felt at her audition for drama school which she turned up at wearing bleached blonde hair, a tight blue dress and white stilettos.

"I was determined to act, even though hardly anyone believed me," she says. "Before my audition my mother said I looked beautiful and I believed her because I thought I looked like the bee's knees - I couldn't have been more wrong.

"I'll never forget turning up - because I could have died. Everyone was wearing heavy overcoats and dressing down, like really cool students. Boy was I the odd one out. I've never felt like such a fool."

Not surprisingly, Sharon has had her fair share of boyfriends, but just for the moment, things seem to have gone quiet on that front.

"Although I'm single at the moment I've always had boyfriends in my 20s and 30s," says Sharon. "I'm enjoying being single because it means I can do exactly what I want.

"Most of the time it's great. Recently I've been doing a lot of travelling. It's OK for now but I would like a relationship again and I want children. I'm at the point in my life where I think I can look after them.

"But there don't seem to be many blokes around at the moment. My friends say I give out the wrong vibes, although I've never been someone who gets asked out that much anyway.

"I go to these dinner parties where my friends usually ask just one single man. Afterwards I have to ask them: 'Do you know me at all?'

As well as wondering where her next boyfriend is coming from, Sharon is prone to the usual actor's fear of not being in work.

"I do get worried between jobs but every actor does," she says. "There's no easy way round it, you're usually always waiting for your agent to ring."

Last summer's Glasgow Kiss was important to Sharon in raising her TV profile - but it also gave her the opportunity to return to the city where she lived for the first 10 years of her life. The eldest of five children, with three brothers and one sister, Sharon grew up in Drumchapel, the tough housing scheme on the outskirts of Glasgow, before her family moved to Fife.

"My parents moved because they thought it was a better place to bring up children and we would have a better quality of life," she explains.

Sharon ended up doing the same drama course at Kirkcaldy College as Dougray Scott and Ewan McGregor before going to drama school in London. She says she loved being back in Glasgow to shoot Glasgow Kiss.

"It's often hard to re-create the authentic look and feel of a place on television but I think Glasgow Kiss got it just about right, especially the colours of the city. Because I was young when I lived in Glasgow, I didn't go round looking at the architecture, or anything like that. But I do remember how warm the Glaswegian people were - and still are.

"They have great character and a wonderful, dry sense of humour."

The Inspector Lynley Mysteries are on BBC1, Monday, 8.30pm, and Tuesday, 8.45pm.

BACK