Steven Mackintosh plays Jeremy

Sitting in the study of his London home, his prized collection of vinyl records lining the walls around him, Steven Mackintosh says that he can quite easily understand how a passion for shopping could slip over into addiction.

And the actor, who plays Nathalie's (Sally Hawkins) husband, Jeremy, in BBC TWO's Shiny Shiny Bright New Hole In My Heart, needs no convincing that it can affect anyone, regardless of their age or sex.

"I think men do it as well but with men it tends to be called collecting," he smiles. "I definitely have a weakness for that and I know loads of blokes have.

"Mine is buying records – I've had a few eBay moments and I've spent a lot of money on them, but I'm able to justify it by calling it collecting."

For men, says the softly spoken actor, it's often not just about buying something but also about "getting the whole set".

"I think that when that goes to another level, it can take over men's lives – just like shopping takes over Nathalie's life," he says. "I quite often have to stop and think to myself, 'I am actually listening to these records, aren't I? I'm not just buying them for the sake of it?'

"So I can really relate to this story. I feel I've got the capacity to cross that line somewhere. If some awful emotional trauma took place, if something happened to me, just a little flick of the switch, I could see myself going down that route."

Fortunately, the Cambridge-born father of two has his vinyl habit firmly under control, but he was delighted to get his teeth into the role of Jeremy, an intelligent, successful GP, who nonetheless struggles to understand what his wife is going through.

"The consequences of drug and alcohol addiction for people's relationships and lives have been dealt with quite a lot in drama, but I think this is the first time shopping addiction has been dealt with as such," he says.

"What this film does really well is explore how difficult it is for people to come to terms with the idea of shopping addiction, to take it seriously.

"I think it's often considered that these people are just spending too much and that the answer is quite simple: just pull the purse strings in a bit; we're all capable of that. That's definitely how Jeremy feels at the outset.

"But the interesting thing is that he ends up going on as much of a journey as Nathalie.

As Nathalie's addiction takes hold, Jeremy's early denial about her shopping binges gives way to bewilderment and, eventually, anger.

"When he does realise it's a problem, he decides that it's Nathalie's friend, Maya [Daniela Nardini], who's responsible for it.

"Nathalie's relationship with Maya is quite clearly a negative one and a very dangerous one because Nathalie's so fragile and there's this friend who has the cash to keep buying. So Jeremy convinces himself that if Nathalie stops seeing Maya, she'll be fine.

"What he doesn't see is that it runs so much deeper than that. Nathalie just desperately wants to be heard but people aren't really listening to her – and that goes for Jeremy, too. But then quite clearly a line is crossed that I think he is just not prepared for."

Steven, 39, has been acting for more than 25 years. "I just kind of fell into it," he laughs. "I did a couple of things as a child and then I got a part when I was about 15 in The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole and suddenly I was working full time."

The actor will shortly appear on the big screen opposite Iain Glen in Small Engine Repair, a heart-warming film set in rural Ireland, and in BBC ONE's The Amazing Mrs Pritchard as the husband of an unlikely Prime Minister, played by Jane Horrocks.

But though he now claims to feel like a veteran, he says he's relished the rare chance to improvise on Shiny Shiny Bright New Hole In My Heart.

"It's an interesting way of working because you feel you're delving inside yourself that bit further. I think it worked particularly well for Jeremy and Nathalie's relationship because there's an uncomfortable element in many of their scenes together," he says.

"Jeremy finds it quite difficult to express himself and there's always a tension between them because neither knows quite what to say next – and, when you're improvising, you literally don't know what's going to be said next.

"When you leave that element open on the day, things can pop out that you just didn't expect. I like that spontaneity and I like being able to surprise myself and feel like something's possible that I hadn't imagined before."

Sally's Shiny new role

Ian Wylie

Sally Hawkins as Nathalie

RETAIL therapy in Manchester provides the backdrop to a new TV drama about shopping addiction. Shiny Shiny Bright New Hole In My Heart is described as "a tale of our time" filmed and set among the city's fashionable stores and boutiques.

Due to be screened on BBC2 later this month, it stars Sally Hawkins as Nathalie, an attractive and successful woman who works as a personal shopper in a glamorous Manchester department store. She befriends wealthy client Maya (Daniela Nardini) and then tries to emulate her lifestyle.

Nathalie is married to dependable GP Jeremy (Steven Mackintosh) but the "opulent city centre of Manchester - full of designer shops, bars and restaurants" - seduces her. Soon her spending habits spiral out of control, with devastating consequences.

"I spent a few days trailing around the shops and getting into Nathalie's head and it was kind of overwhelming," recalls Sally. "The colours, the music, the smells, the way they fold the clothes, the sales. You're basically buying into that world - that sparkly, shiny existence - and that escapism is exactly what it's about for Nathalie."

Fascinating

Sally, 30, says the drama opened her eyes to the subtle tactics shops use to draw people in. "It was fascinating for me to shop with my eyes completely open. Different shops create different atmospheres, but the aim is always to seduce.

"There's almost this subliminal message that this dress or that dress will change your life and that's what it's about for Nathalie. I can see how easily she fell into that dark spiral - although, of course, there is no dress out there that will ever satisfy her."

Sally was concerned that the film, directed by Marc Munden, should do justice to Nathalie's experience. "I was very aware that shopping addiction is almost seen as an excuse for selfish, frivolous behaviour.

"I had to be quite careful because Nathalie could seem quite unsympathetic. She's spending a lot of money and turning her family upside down and she knows it, but she just keeps on going.

"I wanted to show that it's an illness and that she literally can't flick the switch. She's terrified and she's drowning but, like with any addiction, she can't haul herself out."

Fingersmith and Vera Drake actress Sally was required to improvise some of the scenes. "At times I almost forgot the camera was there. It felt so uncomfortable being Nathalie - the deception that was going on, combined with guilt, pain and fear. It's a powerful mix and it's quite dark.

"But I always like disappearing into characters - it's like putting on a pair of shoes and suddenly you're someone else.

Daniela

"It was very exciting to go out with Daniela and try on these fantastic dresses. We had a great time, giggling and throwing clothes around and not getting told off. My mum was delighted that I got to wear proper frocks for a change - I've played maids for so long."

This Life star Daniela confesses: "We shot some scenes in Harvey Nichols in Manchester after the store was shut for the night. It's the only time I've ever felt like shoplifting! I was just wandering through Harvey Nicks, thinking, "Why didn't I bring a big black bin bag?

"It was the best place to be," she laughs. "There's always a lot of hanging around when you're filming, so you could just wander off and there were goodies everywhere. I don't know how many times it crossed my mind.

"Can you imagine Marc's face if a policeman had come up to him and said, `Sorry sir, but your actress has been nicked...'"

Producer Lisa Marie Russo says: "I am a big fan of retail therapy and have experienced the immediate gratification that comes with buying a potentially life-changing frock.

Overindulging

"But there can be a dark side to overindulging, and I was intrigued to learn about Madame Bovary Syndrome, the tabloid name given to shopping addiction. With bankruptcy inexorably rising each year and more and more of us finding our debts debilitating, I realised that looking at the human cost of spending too much was potent dramatic territory."

Lisa mentioned the idea to director Marc, who also happens to be her husband. "First hand experience of my credit card bills meant he immediately latched on to my suggestion."

But is shopping addiction just a female problem? Steven Mackintosh comments: "Men do it as well, but with men it tends to be called collecting. I definitely have a weakness for that and I know loads of blokes have. Mine is buying records. I have a few eBay moments.

"I think that when that goes to another level, it can take over men's lives - just like shopping takes over Nathalie's life. I quite often have to stop and think to myself, `I am actually listening to these records, aren't I?'

"The consequences of drug and alcohol addiction for people's relationships and lives have been dealt with quite a lot in drama, but I think this is the first time shopping addiction has been dealt with as such."

Shiny Shiny Bright New Hole In My Heart

Showing: BBC1 July Week 29

Sally Hawkins, Steven Mackintosh and Daniela Nardini are the stars of Shiny Shiny Bright New Hole In My Heart, a single drama coming soon to BBC TWO from BBC Films.

Sally Hawkins, who starred in the acclaimed Twenty Thousands Streets Under The Sky and Fingersmith, plays Nathalie, an attractive and successful young woman who works as a personal shopper in a glamorous department store. She befriends a wealthy client, Maya played by Daniela Nardini (Bafta-winning portrayal of Anna in This Life, and Scottish Bafta nominated Joan in Festival), and then tries to emulate her lifestyle.

Nathalie is married to dependable GP husband Jeremy played by Steven Mackintosh (Small Engine, the forthcoming The Amazing Mrs Pritchard, and the acclaimed England Expects) but the opulent city centre of Manchester, full of designer shops, bars and restaurants, seduces Nathalie. As her spending habits spiral out of control, Nathalie is faced with devastating consequences for both herself and her family.

Ruth Caleb, Producer, says: "Shiny Shiny Bright New Hole In My Heart is a tale of our time, a contemporary story of an aspiring and ambitious young woman whose life spirals out of control when, with the pressures of life and relationships, she finds solace in shopping.

"Writer/director Marc Munden has crafted a superb piece of drama in which he shows how easy it is to tip the balance."

Ruth Caleb has produced a number of highly-acclaimed improvised dramas, including the award-winning Out of Control, Tomorrow La Scala! and Bullet Boy.

Marc Munden - whose credits as director include the acclaimed Conviction, The Canterbury Tales and Vanity Fair - spent three weeks in rehearsals with the cast, improvising on the core of a script and developing the characters.

Marc says: "Improvising is really demanding on the actors. It requires them to dig deep and it is relentless in the pursuit of the truth but it does create something that is both spontaneous and organic."

Producer Lisa Marie Russo, whose credits include Brothers of the Head and Dance, explains more about the genesis for this powerful improvised film: "I am a big fan of retail therapy and have experienced the immediate gratification that comes with buying a potentially life-changing frock.

"But there can be a dark side to overindulging, and I was intrigued to learn about Madame Bovary Syndrome, the tabloid name given to shopping addiction."

Lisa Marie continues: "With bankruptcy inexorably rising each year and more and more of us finding our debts debilitating I realised that looking at the human cost of spending too much was potent dramatic territory."

Shiny Shiny Bright New Hole In My Heart BBC2

 

It took a while to get to the bottom of things in Shiny Shiny Bright New Hole in My Heart. Something was up. You could tell by the sense of hush that attended the camera as it idled through the opening scenes, forcing us to fish for something significant amid the muted goings on, beneath the worrying surface of piano and strings.

Here was Natalie, a consultant at a high-end designer store, offering sartorial advice to a footballer accompanied by his girlfriend - she quietly hectoring, he hesitant in the face of a flamboyant jacket. 'Have you not seen what David Beckham wears?' the girl said. 'I'm not David Beckham. I play for Rochdale,' the man replied. It was an amusing line, but you got the feeling it wasn't for laughs. This wasn't about footballers' wives.

 

We moved on to an opulent apartment where Natalie sold an expensive handbag in odd circumstances to a glamorous friend. At her own suburban home, we saw Natalie's nervy arrival met by a frown from her mother, whose eyes saw something ours didn't. Her eight-year-old daughter's antennae twitched ominously. We saw Natalie eat cake in a strangely feral manner.

We noticed the way her GP husband Jeremy opened a gift from his wife as if expecting to find a severed body part. Glances were exchanged. The air crackled with the unsaid. Was she a thief? A drunk? A child beater? A bulimic? An adultress? A secret lesbian?

 

As it turned out, this ambivalence was not simply a tease to jack up the suspense but to establish the gravity of whatever was going on - to have us witness its impact on the faces of people who cared. When we discovered that Natalie had an addiction to shopping, it was too late for anyone to consider it a joke or a pseudo-pathology belonging to daytime TV agony shows.

Now it was all downhill. Spurred on by her wealthy role model Maya (played languid and louche by Daniela Nardini), Natalie scorched across town in a frightening retail frenzy, in and out of Harvey Nichols, buying her child's affection with gifts (a pony was soon observing events from the family's modest back lawn), loading taxis up outside the local Comet and taking delivery of tragically unaffordable luxuries.

 

Sally Hawkins excelled as a woman heading for the abyss in pursuit of a terrible, exhilarating obsession. Steven Mackintosh, as the husband, looked every inch a man whose foundations were sliding beneath the weight of unwanted kitchen equipment. We could do with more single dramas like this one.

Shiny Shiny Bright New Hole in my Heart - BBC

Sally Hawkins, Steven Mackintosh and Daniela Nardini are the stars of Shiny Shiny Bright New Hole In My Heart, a single drama from for BBC TWO from BBC Films.

Sally, who recently starred in the acclaimed Twenty Thousands Streets Under The Sky and Fingersmith, plays Nathalie, an attractive and successful young woman who works as a personal shopper in a glamorous department store.

Married to dependable GP husband Jeremy (Steven Mackintosh - England Expects, The Mother) Nathalie becomes seduced by the opulent city centre of Manchester, full of designer shops, bars and restaurants.

She befriends a wealthy client, Maya (Daniela Nardini, This Life, Gunpowder, Treason and Plot) and tries to emulate her lifestyle.

As Nathalie's spending habits spiral out of control, she is faced with devastating consequences for her and her family.

Ruth Caleb, co-producer, says: "Shiny Shiny Bright New Hole In My Heart is a tale of our time, a contemporary story of an aspiring and ambitious young woman whose life spirals out of control when, with the pressures of life and relationships, she finds solace in shopping.

"Writer/director Marc Munden has crafted a superb piece of drama in which he shows how easy it is to tip the balance."

Munden, whose credits as director include Conviction, The Canterbury Tales and Vanity Fair, spent three weeks in rehearsals with the cast, improvising on the core of a script and developing the characters.

Ruth Caleb has produced a number of highly acclaimed improvised dramas, including the award-winning Out of Control, Tomorrow La Scala! and The Other Boleyn Girl.

Caleb and Lisa Marie Russo also co-produced the acclaimed film Bullet Boy.

Improvisation adds a very naturalistic feel to the production and brings the reality of the subject much closer to home.

Shiny Shiny Bright New Hole In My Heart, a BBC Films production, is produced by Lisa Marie Russo (Brothers of the Head, Dance) and Ruth Caleb. David Thompson is executive producer.

It will be transmitted next year on BBC TWO.

TV series Shiny Shiny Bright New Hole in My Heart BBC

Christmas, it was posited in this one-off drama, is the time of year when we show our love with gifts. But what if you think it is Christmas every day, and buying and giving is the only way you communicate? What if you mix up self-possession with your possessions? That way lies madness, Queer Street and, potentially, a smug TV drama in which viewers are asked to "understand" that those who cannot cope with the bounty of an affluent society are sick.

Wisely, Shiny Shiny Bright New Hole in My Heart (26 July, 9pm) - even the title given to Nathalie the shopaholic's story was excessive - was cautious about pathologising her condition. In the first place, shrinkery is the antithesis of drama. In the second, over-shopping may not be an illness at all. In America, doctors have had only limited success treating shopaholics with drugs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors). As an unsympathetic GP puts it to a colleague, who happens to be Nathalie's husband: "Is it a real condition at all or is it a cry for help - in which case she's wasting your time and now mine? She should be sent back to Selfridges with a gold card."

So what is wrong with Nathalie, a personal shopper to the rich who becomes so badly infected by the spending bug that she hires a lock-up in which to house unopened electronic goods, buys a £24,000-watch (a two-credit-card transaction), splashes out on a sports car although she cannot drive, and treats her daughter to a pet pony? The pony at the window - the daughter would have been happy with a pink plastic one - is, to her husband, the equivalent of the wake-up call delivered by the horse's head on the pillow in The Godfather. "It's a huge animal in our garden," he protests, to which Nathalie responds: "It's not a thoroughbred," the script allowing itself a moment of humour.

A clue to her problem lies in the almost spectral thinness of Nathalie, played by Sally Hawkins. Manchester's greatest consumer never actually gains weight, a visual metaphor for how, the more this ex-bulimic consumes, the emptier she becomes. She lacks any aptitude for developing relationships. At home, she communicates with her daughter by gifts of designer clothes. At work she misidentifies Maya, the wealthy female client for whom she selects clothes and jewellery, as her friend, prompting Maya to remind her when she cries for help: "I pay you to support me, not the other way round." Like every other relationship in Nathalie's life, friendship has become a commercial transaction and, as such, is on its way to bankruptcy.

The only person impervious to materialism and thus Nathalie's attempts to buy love is her husband, Jeremy, a first-rate doctor but a second-rate human being. The genius of the piece is that Jeremy is almost as dysfunctional as his wife. If we were to offer a diagnosis of his condition, the terms "Asperger syndrome" or "sociopath" might come into play. He is so bad at small talk that it almost costs him a partnership in his GP practice; so bad at it, in fact, that he goes to an office party armed with riddles from his daughter's joke book. At home, if Nathalie is incapable of telling the truth even to herself (credit is, after all, a kind of financial lie), Jeremy can only tell the truth and, unwittingly, further depletes his wife's skimpy self-confidence by wondering if her new dress needs more "lifting or gathering". As Jeremy, Steven Mackintosh delivers a performance of literal-minded awkwardness that eclipses even Hawkins's excellent turn.

However, the reason why this drama was so much better than any other on television this past week was that the writer-director, Marc Munden, placed a premium on naturalism. The dialogue was partly improvised, the shopping scenes were filmed in real malls by long-distance lens, and at the Spenders Anonymous meeting actors mixed it up with real addicts who delivered strange soliloquies about their past sprees. Shiny Shiny . . . made a drama such as Tony Marchant's recent Family Man, which dealt with another hot social topic (IVF clinics), look like soap opera. With the most addictive TV continuing to come from within the reality genre - The Apprentice and The Convent more than Big Brother - drama has to continue to reply with that most artificial of all forms: realism. This is not a new insight: in another era, Munden's play could have proudly marched in step with the best of Ken Loach, not because it dealt with an "issue", but because it felt true.

Cathy Prior: Shiny Future

It was in 'Fingersmith' as a Victorian thief that Sally Hawkins first arrested our attention. Now she's set for another success, says Cathy Pryor, as a woman brought low by her shopping addiction in BBC's 'Shiny Shiny Bright New Hole In My Heart'

Published: 23 July 2006

For someone who loves acting as much as Sally Hawkins does, there are a lot of things about the industry that seem to get up her nose. Its obsession with celebrities, for instance. "It's insane!" she says. "So irritating! Celebrity stuff on TV is completely overshadowing drama. It's partly to do with money. I hate the obsession with money. I understand that boxes have to be ticked, but I hate that you have to fight to get an interesting or controversial piece on. Interesting stuff is pushed on to obscure late-night slots on TV. It's all about ratings but it shouldn't be..." Then she backtracks. "But I suppose I'm as guilty as the next person of buying Heat, so I'm adding to it, aren't I? I'm horrified and fascinated all at once."

Hawkins has joined me in the bar of a Covent Garden hotel on one of those steamily hot weekdays we've all been enduring lately to talk about her latest role. As it turns out, there are several of these. She's currently filming a "sweet girlfriend" part in Woody Allen's latest project, which is being filmed in London but is as yet unnamed. She's just finished two other films: Waz, a serial killer movie set in New York, and The Painted Veil, an adaptation of a Somerset Maugham novel starring Naomi Watts. She's to play Anne Elliott in an upcoming adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion. And she's certain to get a lot of attention for her turn in the lead role in the BBC drama Shiny Shiny Bright New Hole in my Heart, playing Nathalie, a woman who leads her lifestyle, her marriage and her sanity into peril with her addiction to shopping. All of that should well and truly put Hawkins on the map, if she's not there already courtesy of last year's Fingersmith, the BBC's adaptation of Sarah Waters' complex Victorian-era novel about two women who fall in love and betray each other (Hawkins played working-class Sue Trinder).

For someone whose star is rising so rapidly, she's not what you'd call an "actressy" actress. She's a slip of a thing who looks rather younger than her age (she turned 30 this April), with clear, pale skin and angular features that can look strikingly pretty and - when occasion demands - frail and worn, even drab. The only flamboyant things about her are her jewellery (lots of it: big earrings, outsized ring, chunky bracelet which she breaks during the interview, sending it tinkling in pieces under the table); and her wild, curly mane of dyed blonde hair, a toned-down version of what she sported for Waz ("I looked insane - like I'd just stuck my head down the loo with a bottle of bleach").

And, I suppose, you could add her love of superlatives. Celebrity culture she may despise, but critical or mean in general she is not: Hawkins is endearingly bubbly and enthusiastic, particularly about genuine creative work. She has high praise for people she admires, of whom there are not a few: Woody Allen, for instance ("Such an icon! I don't believe he's really human"); Sarah Waters ("gorgeous"); director Mike Leigh, who gave her her big break with 2002's All or Nothing ("I've learned so much from him"); her co-stars in Shiny Shiny, Daniela Nardini ("lovely... she is quite scary") and Steven Mackintosh ("brilliant"). You'd think she's putting it on to plug her latest show, and perhaps I should be cynical, but she really seems sincere: someone who takes unaffected pleasure in the serious side of her profession.

As a woman, does she feel any pressure from the acting industry's preoccupation with looks, I ask? "I do find it difficult when it's less about acting and more about how you look. But I'm not a female lead. I don't play romantic heroines, and that's a good thing because they tend to be very dull parts. Except in Jane Austen! I've been lucky enough to have stepped around that. I play a range of characters. Some are prettier than others, some are quite plain. I'm lucky enough to have a face that can shift around.

"I don't much wear makeup - I'm crap with makeup," she adds. "It always makes me panic when I have to dress up and try to look good. I find it uncomfortable. I admire a female that can spend hours scrubbing or buffing, but how can you have the time or the patience? Yeah, you look great, but how dull are you? How boring! But this business is weird with women!"

The way the industry deals with sex has also been a bugbear. "With Fingersmith, the director was very sensitive and clever with the sex scenes," she says. "When we filmed it there was no flesh shown and it was very tastefully done but I know that she had to fight for that. The powers that be were concerned that it wasn't sexy enough, not enough flesh showing. It's ridiculous. But to give them credit they realised they were wrong in the end. I think it's very sexy. Less is more. Sex is to do with the mind. You saw a bit of a tummy and that was it. People were convinced afterwards that we were both topless in that scene, but we kept covered up for all of it. Their imaginations were doing all the work."

I ask if there's anything else about the industry that annoys her. "Actors who take themselves so seriously and carry on as if everything's a chore," she says. "That really pisses me off. I think, how lucky are you to be here? Lighten up! You never know when it might be taken away."

She says that last sentence with a slight wobble in her voice, as well she might, having had a health scare over Christmas that left her facing the possibility that she might never act again - a chronic condition that she doesn't want to name and which now, thankfully, seems to be responding to treatment. "I didn't know how debilitating it was going to be, and I still don't know, because I've just been diagnosed. I thought I was going to have to start again with everything. I love acting - as corny as it sounds, I do. I was terrified, and I couldn't imagine life without it.

"Then I thought, what's the worst that can happen? If I had to give up I'd tear myself apart but what's meant to be is meant to be. There would be no real point in fighting it. If I was to stop now it wouldn't be the end of the world, I've had a really good career. I would do all the things I've been putting off, go off to art school, live in the country and run a little farm... I'd still be devastated of course!"

It's striking, I say, that for someone so upbeat and bubbly, who reacts so positively in the most part to people and life, the characters she's played tend to be dark, or to go through severe struggle. Fingersmith's Sue Trinder, for instance, is double-crossed by her lover and incarcerated in the madhouse. Zena in Tipping the Velvet (Andrew Davies' racy 2002 adaptation of another Waters novel) is thrown out onto the streets. Susan, in Vera Drake (a Mike Leigh film from 2004), is at her wit's end, unsure where she can turn to end her pregnancy. Ella in Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky, a BBC drama from 2005, can't bring herself to tell waiter Bob that she loves him or find the words or energy to tell her pesky older suitor Ernest Eccles (Phil Davis) that she doesn't fancy him and wishes he would just go away. Playing Mary Shelley in the 2003 BBC drama Byron can't have been a barrel of laughs, and neither can her recent theatre work, which has included The Winterling by Jez Butterworth at the Royal Court and David Hare's adaptation of The House of Bernarda Alba at the National Theatre, both last year.

"People always say that to me!" she says. "I suppose taking those roles is my way of expressing that side of me, it's an outlet. Many of the good roles are the damaged ones. Bubbly and happy doesn't tend to make for aninteresting part. Anyway, however dark a character is, there's always a glimmer of light and what I like to do is uncover that. I like to unpick them. The more I play someone the more I discover about them and I begin to love them." She breaks off anxiously. "That must sound incredibly pretentious! Actor-speak in print always sounds incredibly pretentious... Anyway, I blame it all on the TV executives," she concludes suddenly. "They only seem to be interested in damaged women."

I ask her if the roles ever depress her. "Invariably it can be difficult when you're visiting dark places in the work," she says. "Nathalie, for instance, in Shiny Shiny: she's quite manipulative. I could feel the subject matter pulling me under. I felt quite sad for her, and it was quite dark playing her and quite difficult to even go there. Spending six weeks in her shoes was hard. I loved her of course, but I was pleased to close the door on her as well." Hawkins says that she doubts Nathalie, a bulimic before she turned to shopping, "will ever be well": and indeed you do feel that in the final scene, watching her listlessly crumble tiny pieces of bun onto a plate as though that was all that was left to her.

Hawkins herself, despite her brush with ill-health, seems anything but damaged. She clearly loves her family, which she describes as close and very supportive (her parents, who live in Ireland, have had successful careers co-writing books for preschool children, and she has an older brother who runs an internet company). She had a happy childhood and always knew she wanted to act. "I've loved acting, sad to say, since I was very young. I was obsessed with black and white 1940s films. At primary school I was always creating little theatre pieces to show the rest of the school... whether they wanted to be shown or not. I loved comedy from very early on and that's what I wanted to do, make people laugh. And then as I got older I realised that you could not only make people laugh but move them in other ways that were equally rewarding."

Raised in Dulwich, she went to a private school, James Allen Girls' School, which had a brilliantly well-equipped theatre, she says. "It was huge, bigger than professional theatres that I've worked in since!" They frequently mounted productions with a local boys' school, "which made it even more fun... in fact it's probably another reason I got into acting. But it was a very academically driven school, and to rebel against that I threw myself into the drama." From school, it was but a short step to Rada, from which she graduated in 1998.

If Hawkins hadn't loved acting so much, she might perhaps have been a writer. She loves books - no surprise, given that her parents are authors - and writes her own short stories, though she hasn't as yet tried to publish them One striking factor with her career is that she's often worked in adaptations. "I suppose that's what I've been drawn to, and I've been lucky enough to be offered them. I adore books. Patrick Hamilton, now. He's just incredibly underrated. When I discovered him, I felt: 'How come I don't know about this?' He can make me cry and burst out laughing within a sentence." Other writers whose short stories she loves include Flaubert, Chekhov, Ian McEwen ("his early stories are incredibly dark"), William Trevor and Margaret Atwood ("she's just brilliant. The Robber Bride I could read again and again.")

If she's yet to publish her fiction, though, Hawkins hasn't been so reticent with her comedy work, which she writes with a friend from school. "I"ve had sketches on the radio, on the BBC's The Concrete Cow in 2002. The power of writing something and performing it, and hearing the audience laugh, it almost stops my breath." They also put on a play, Jane and Fern, at the Soho Theatre, because "we had no work and thought why don't we do something ourselves... It was the tiniest, tiniest thing, it was only on for two nights. It was about these schoolgirls backstage during a school play and occasionally one would go off to do their scene or say their line on stage." Her love of comedy has also led her into to small roles in Little Britain, which she loves: she was Kenny Craig's girlfriend in series one and two and "David Walliams vomited on me in series three... Fingers crossed, they'll ask me back for series four!"

And life outside acting? She's unattached, quite happily, she says. "I was in a very close relationship for about five years, but sadly that didn't work out. And there have been a few mini-relationships." She loves painting, and has just got her name onto a waiting list for an allotment ("I love how plants respond to you!"). She's a bit of a greenie, as well. When I ask her what she'd do if she ruled the world she says she'd sort out the environment and get rid of George Bush. And what job would she give George Bush instead? "I don't think he should be given a job! Can you give Bush any responsibility? Perhaps he should go back to school." Anything else she'd change? "Well, air con on the Tube would help," she says, before recollecting: "but that wouldn't help the planet, would it?"

It wouldn't. But more serious drama of the kind Hawkins excels at probably would. Let's hope those pesky industry executives keep on getting some things right.

For someone who loves acting as much as Sally Hawkins does, there are a lot of things about the industry that seem to get up her nose. Its obsession with celebrities, for instance. "It's insane!" she says. "So irritating! Celebrity stuff on TV is completely overshadowing drama. It's partly to do with money. I hate the obsession with money. I understand that boxes have to be ticked, but I hate that you have to fight to get an interesting or controversial piece on. Interesting stuff is pushed on to obscure late-night slots on TV. It's all about ratings but it shouldn't be..." Then she backtracks. "But I suppose I'm as guilty as the next person of buying Heat, so I'm adding to it, aren't I? I'm horrified and fascinated all at once."

Hawkins has joined me in the bar of a Covent Garden hotel on one of those steamily hot weekdays we've all been enduring lately to talk about her latest role. As it turns out, there are several of these. She's currently filming a "sweet girlfriend" part in Woody Allen's latest project, which is being filmed in London but is as yet unnamed. She's just finished two other films: Waz, a serial killer movie set in New York, and The Painted Veil, an adaptation of a Somerset Maugham novel starring Naomi Watts. She's to play Anne Elliott in an upcoming adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion. And she's certain to get a lot of attention for her turn in the lead role in the BBC drama Shiny Shiny Bright New Hole in my Heart, playing Nathalie, a woman who leads her lifestyle, her marriage and her sanity into peril with her addiction to shopping. All of that should well and truly put Hawkins on the map, if she's not there already courtesy of last year's Fingersmith, the BBC's adaptation of Sarah Waters' complex Victorian-era novel about two women who fall in love and betray each other (Hawkins played working-class Sue Trinder).

For someone whose star is rising so rapidly, she's not what you'd call an "actressy" actress. She's a slip of a thing who looks rather younger than her age (she turned 30 this April), with clear, pale skin and angular features that can look strikingly pretty and - when occasion demands - frail and worn, even drab. The only flamboyant things about her are her jewellery (lots of it: big earrings, outsized ring, chunky bracelet which she breaks during the interview, sending it tinkling in pieces under the table); and her wild, curly mane of dyed blonde hair, a toned-down version of what she sported for Waz ("I looked insane - like I'd just stuck my head down the loo with a bottle of bleach").

And, I suppose, you could add her love of superlatives. Celebrity culture she may despise, but critical or mean in general she is not: Hawkins is endearingly bubbly and enthusiastic, particularly about genuine creative work. She has high praise for people she admires, of whom there are not a few: Woody Allen, for instance ("Such an icon! I don't believe he's really human"); Sarah Waters ("gorgeous"); director Mike Leigh, who gave her her big break with 2002's All or Nothing ("I've learned so much from him"); her co-stars in Shiny Shiny, Daniela Nardini ("lovely... she is quite scary") and Steven Mackintosh ("brilliant"). You'd think she's putting it on to plug her latest show, and perhaps I should be cynical, but she really seems sincere: someone who takes unaffected pleasure in the serious side of her profession.

As a woman, does she feel any pressure from the acting industry's preoccupation with looks, I ask? "I do find it difficult when it's less about acting and more about how you look. But I'm not a female lead. I don't play romantic heroines, and that's a good thing because they tend to be very dull parts. Except in Jane Austen! I've been lucky enough to have stepped around that. I play a range of characters. Some are prettier than others, some are quite plain. I'm lucky enough to have a face that can shift around.

"I don't much wear makeup - I'm crap with makeup," she adds. "It always makes me panic when I have to dress up and try to look good. I find it uncomfortable. I admire a female that can spend hours scrubbing or buffing, but how can you have the time or the patience? Yeah, you look great, but how dull are you? How boring! But this business is weird with women!"

The way the industry deals with sex has also been a bugbear. "With Fingersmith, the director was very sensitive and clever with the sex scenes," she says. "When we filmed it there was no flesh shown and it was very tastefully done but I know that she had to fight for that. The powers that be were concerned that it wasn't sexy enough, not enough flesh showing. It's ridiculous. But to give them credit they realised they were wrong in the end. I think it's very sexy. Less is more. Sex is to do with the mind. You saw a bit of a tummy and that was it. People were convinced afterwards that we were both topless in that scene, but we kept covered up for all of it. Their imaginations were doing all the work."

I ask if there's anything else about the industry that annoys her. "Actors who take themselves so seriously and carry on as if everything's a chore," she says. "That really pisses me off. I think, how lucky are you to be here? Lighten up! You never know when it might be taken away."

She says that last sentence with a slight wobble in her voice, as well she might, having had a health scare over Christmas that left her facing the possibility that she might never act again - a chronic condition that she doesn't want to name and which now, thankfully, seems to be responding to treatment. "I didn't know how debilitating it was going to be, and I still don't know, because I've just been diagnosed. I thought I was going to have to start again with everything. I love acting - as corny as it sounds, I do. I was terrified, and I couldn't imagine life without it.

"Then I thought, what's the worst that can happen? If I had to give up I'd tear myself apart but what's meant to be is meant to be. There would be no real point in fighting it. If I was to stop now it wouldn't be the end of the world, I've had a really good career. I would do all the things I've been putting off, go off to art school, live in the country and run a little farm... I'd still be devastated of course!"

It's striking, I say, that for someone so upbeat and bubbly, who reacts so positively in the most part to people and life, the characters she's played tend to be dark, or to go through severe struggle. Fingersmith's Sue Trinder, for instance, is double-crossed by her lover and incarcerated in the madhouse. Zena in Tipping the Velvet (Andrew Davies' racy 2002 adaptation of another Waters novel) is thrown out onto the streets. Susan, in Vera Drake (a Mike Leigh film from 2004), is at her wit's end, unsure where she can turn to end her pregnancy. Ella in Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky, a BBC drama from 2005, can't bring herself to tell waiter Bob that she loves him or find the words or energy to tell her pesky older suitor Ernest Eccles (Phil Davis) that she doesn't fancy him and wishes he would just go away. Playing Mary Shelley in the 2003 BBC drama Byron can't have been a barrel of laughs, and neither can her recent theatre work, which has included The Winterling by Jez Butterworth at the Royal Court and David Hare's adaptation of The House of Bernarda Alba at the National Theatre, both last year.

"People always say that to me!" she says. "I suppose taking those roles is my way of expressing that side of me, it's an outlet. Many of the good roles are the damaged ones. Bubbly and happy doesn't tend to make for aninteresting part. Anyway, however dark a character is, there's always a glimmer of light and what I like to do is uncover that. I like to unpick them. The more I play someone the more I discover about them and I begin to love them." She breaks off anxiously. "That must sound incredibly pretentious! Actor-speak in print always sounds incredibly pretentious... Anyway, I blame it all on the TV executives," she concludes suddenly. "They only seem to be interested in damaged women."

I ask her if the roles ever depress her. "Invariably it can be difficult when you're visiting dark places in the work," she says. "Nathalie, for instance, in Shiny Shiny: she's quite manipulative. I could feel the subject matter pulling me under. I felt quite sad for her, and it was quite dark playing her and quite difficult to even go there. Spending six weeks in her shoes was hard. I loved her of course, but I was pleased to close the door on her as well." Hawkins says that she doubts Nathalie, a bulimic before she turned to shopping, "will ever be well": and indeed you do feel that in the final scene, watching her listlessly crumble tiny pieces of bun onto a plate as though that was all that was left to her.

Hawkins herself, despite her brush with ill-health, seems anything but damaged. She clearly loves her family, which she describes as close and very supportive (her parents, who live in Ireland, have had successful careers co-writing books for preschool children, and she has an older brother who runs an internet company). She had a happy childhood and always knew she wanted to act. "I've loved acting, sad to say, since I was very young. I was obsessed with black and white 1940s films. At primary school I was always creating little theatre pieces to show the rest of the school... whether they wanted to be shown or not. I loved comedy from very early on and that's what I wanted to do, make people laugh. And then as I got older I realised that you could not only make people laugh but move them in other ways that were equally rewarding."

Raised in Dulwich, she went to a private school, James Allen Girls' School, which had a brilliantly well-equipped theatre, she says. "It was huge, bigger than professional theatres that I've worked in since!" They frequently mounted productions with a local boys' school, "which made it even more fun... in fact it's probably another reason I got into acting. But it was a very academically driven school, and to rebel against that I threw myself into the drama." From school, it was but a short step to Rada, from which she graduated in 1998.

If Hawkins hadn't loved acting so much, she might perhaps have been a writer. She loves books - no surprise, given that her parents are authors - and writes her own short stories, though she hasn't as yet tried to publish them One striking factor with her career is that she's often worked in adaptations. "I suppose that's what I've been drawn to, and I've been lucky enough to be offered them. I adore books. Patrick Hamilton, now. He's just incredibly underrated. When I discovered him, I felt: 'How come I don't know about this?' He can make me cry and burst out laughing within a sentence." Other writers whose short stories she loves include Flaubert, Chekhov, Ian McEwen ("his early stories are incredibly dark"), William Trevor and Margaret Atwood ("she's just brilliant. The Robber Bride I could read again and again.")

If she's yet to publish her fiction, though, Hawkins hasn't been so reticent with her comedy work, which she writes with a friend from school. "I"ve had sketches on the radio, on the BBC's The Concrete Cow in 2002. The power of writing something and performing it, and hearing the audience laugh, it almost stops my breath." They also put on a play, Jane and Fern, at the Soho Theatre, because "we had no work and thought why don't we do something ourselves... It was the tiniest, tiniest thing, it was only on for two nights. It was about these schoolgirls backstage during a school play and occasionally one would go off to do their scene or say their line on stage." Her love of comedy has also led her into to small roles in Little Britain, which she loves: she was Kenny Craig's girlfriend in series one and two and "David Walliams vomited on me in series three... Fingers crossed, they'll ask me back for series four!"

And life outside acting? She's unattached, quite happily, she says. "I was in a very close relationship for about five years, but sadly that didn't work out. And there have been a few mini-relationships." She loves painting, and has just got her name onto a waiting list for an allotment ("I love how plants respond to you!"). She's a bit of a greenie, as well. When I ask her what she'd do if she ruled the world she says she'd sort out the environment and get rid of George Bush. And what job would she give George Bush instead? "I don't think he should be given a job! Can you give Bush any responsibility? Perhaps he should go back to school." Anything else she'd change? "Well, air con on the Tube would help," she says, before recollecting: "but that wouldn't help the planet, would it?"

It wouldn't. But more serious drama of the kind Hawkins excels at probably would. Let's hope those pesky industry executives keep on getting some things right.