|
The Scotsman
The Second Sexiest Woman On TV has a vice and she came to it late, a bit like Charlie Watts, who passed on the bacchanalian pastimes of his fellow Rolling Stones for two decades only to succumb to heroin in his mid-forties.
In a Portakabin at the BBC's Elstree Studios, her head half out the window, Tamzin Outhwaite chuckles at the comparison - she has a dirty laugh. "Can you believe I waited until I was 29 before I started smoking? The only saving grace, I suppose, is that I bum my ciggies off mates." So how serious is her addiction - ten, 20, 50 a day? "No, just the one."
She takes a last, lingering and, it should be said, deeply sensual sook of her fag, checks her VW Beetle - well, you can't be too careful round this neck of the woods - and returns to her seat. She's tall, willowy and of course blonde. She removes her long leather coat, the kind almost always purchased with ill-gotten gains, to reveal an outfit of autumn browns and beiges that includes knee-length kinky boots. Repeatedly over the next hour and a half, she'll tug at them, and her mini-skirt, as if her clothes weren't her own, which they aren't.
Outhwaite, 31, an actress for whom fame has come late and for whom the ultra-fame of a soap is something to be taken in your elegant stride, is better known to the great viewing nation as Mel Owen of EastEnders, and lipgloss-pout legend. Before that, she was Mel Beale, previously Mel Healy, and for all we know, probably a few other Mels along the way. She gets around, does this one, but not for much longer. The one-fag-a-day habit may be permanent, but the four-episodes-a-week routine as a "soap stunna" and "telly turn-on" will end shortly. Fings, as they say, are gonna be different round 'ere. Meanwhile out there, on Planet Real, Outhwaite wants to be Britain's answer to Jennifer Lopez ...
"It's been three years, which seems like long enough, and let's face it, Mel's just about slept with every man in Walford now - there's no place left for her to go," she explains, after shooting a scene where her alter ego has been buying fruit from Marks & Sparks. "Mel has been through a helluva lot. She arrived as a girl-next-door and ended up getting kidnapped by Dan Sullivan as revenge on Phil Mitchell. It's been an emotional rollercoaster, she's hit so many highs, too many perhaps. To maintain that kind of momentum is difficult. Maybe with each big drama in her life having to be topped by the next one, she'd have turned into a bit of a joke. I didn't want that to happen. I want her to go out at the top of her game, to leave everyone gasping for more." She pauses. "But probably the reaction will be: 'Thank God the cow's gone.'"
Elstree has a strange air of reality about it. Fiction is made here, but the gunmetal-grey hangars and huts could be any other factory plant. Killing time before the interview, I walk past a big chimney, and lots of men in overalls mooching around, drinking tea from paper cups, while others kick a ball against a wall.
The restaurant resembles your standard works canteen, and none of the scene-hands scoffing platefuls of chips give the woman in the spray-on leopard-print top and shiny short black skirt a second glance. This is the one they call Cat, dressed for a Breezer-fuelled night "up West" or, alternatively, a spot of housework. Outside, a forklift trundles by. It's pulling carts loaded with scenery, each containing four flimsy walls lashed together, and one is labelled "Bepe's living-room". Any day now, "Mel's bedroom" will be broken up and chucked into the incinerator. Now if these walls could talk ...
Men love Mel, obviously - she bears a passing resemblance to Susan George, who bizarrely did a turn herself in Albert Square recently - but so do women. Outhwaite says her character thinks of herself as a feminist. So, given that she already possesses the same filthy laugh, which other bit of Mel would she like to take with her when she walks into the Walford sunset, with the low spark of a high-heeled girl? "Oh, probably her ability to forget about her last man and move on to the next one so effortlessly ... "
This might be a joke. Outhwaite is charming, up for talking about most things and funny, and when an extra with a squatted-in face straight out of the books of Central Casting barges unannounced into her caravan, she quips: "Meet my boyfriend." But she won't discuss her private life, other than to admit she's always been in long relationships.
"I've never been a girl for messing around," she says, distancing herself from Mel, she of the two marriages and countless affairs, who seems to pick her men from the Albert Square copshop's usual suspect files, not least Steve Owen, alias Martin Kemp. "And I'm still mates with all my exes, they're very dear to me, which probably explains why I've never had a kiss-and-tell story written about me."
These exes include Marty Benson, a Scots-born TV producer. She was recently quoted as saying she's "just good friends" with Ali G sidekick Steve Ellington ... and then there's Jamie Theakston, subject of some tabloid tittle-tattle about a fling. Mind you, there's always Jamie Theakston; he gets around almost as much as Mel does in the quick-assembly bedrooms of Walford.
OK, let's try to ask the question another way - does she always need to be in a relationship?
"In the few I've had, the support, companionship and intimacy has been pretty good. But, you know, maybe I'm more like Mel than I think. She's a chameleon and I'm like that about men. My view on them changes from week to week. This week, my career is fulfilling in more ways than one and right now I really don't think I need anybody. But I love being in love. And I want kids one day ... "
Tamzin Outhwaite is an Essex Girl, born in Ilford, the daughter of Colin, a taxi driver, and Anna, her half-Italian mother, and grew up as part of a happy, loving family with her two younger brothers, Kes, now a physiotherapist, and Jake, who runs a valeting business.
Her first memory of anything was falling off the top bunkbed, which left her with a tiny, tick-shaped scar above her left eye. "My mum used to say I got it because I was a good girl." Another chuckle, straight from the gutters of Albert Square.
"I was very sporty - trampolining, gymnastics, netball - so I was a tomboy when I was younger." What else? "Oh, loud, show-offy, and a bit of a madam." For part of her teens, she went to a convent school. "That must be where I got my discipline from - you had to wear the right shoes indoors and never be late for anything." Now, she certainly seems pretty sussed, in control, even more so than Mel.
"I'm glad this mad sort of fame came to me late, when I was 28, rather than 18, when it might have turned my head." When has it been at its maddest? "Millennium Eve, when EastEnders was broadcast on a big screen in Trafalgar Square. I was marrying Ian Beale, and when it came to the 'I do' moment the whole crowd fell completely silent. That was mad. Thankfully, I was hundreds of miles away in Madagascar."
She gets lots of fan mail, of course, mostly from men, but nothing weird, save the odd request to dress in leather for a signed snap. How does she feel about being thought of as extremely desirable (and second only to Nigella Lawson in that Sexiest Woman poll)? "Well, obviously it's fantastic, but if you're on the telly and can scrub up reasonably well, you're going to get some attention."
At some point in her youth, she can't remember when or why, but it was after buying her first record, The Nolans' I'm In The Mood For Dancing, and before her disastrous experiments with a tangerine perm and soccer casual-style fashion, the sporty girl fell in love with acting. "I loved the teamwork of school productions. Actors are very heart-on-sleeve people, when you're all thrown together for a show, you get on. I loved the intimacy of acting, and still do."
For a while, Cats was the apogee of her ambitions. She didn't get there, but still managed to notch up just about every other musical in the West End, dancing in clubs with an all-girl troupe between jobs. "I never got depressed when the break didn't come, I would have been happy being a jobbing actress forever. I have friends who are actors who're much more talented than me, and they're still waiting. The only thing I can say is that, for me, the journey was the most amazing thing. I love my life now, but it's much more pressurised."
When she picks her parts now, of course, she's the cat who gets the cream. She denies being the beneficiary of a £2 million golden handshake tying her to the BBC, but the first drama of the deal, Red Cap, is a star vehicle in which she plays an army investigator. A series has been commissioned and she's not even been seen in the role of Sgt Jo McDonagh.
"There are some great actors in this, like Douglas Hodge and James Thornton, and at first I was flattered that they wanted to be associated with me because I get a lot of press attention and they might have thought me a bit of a media whore. But I didn't doubt my own ability, no."
The EastEnders producers naturally wanted to stay, but her mind was made up. She doesn't know how Mel will be written out, but hopes she might be allowed to swank off somewhere exotic, say the Caribbean, so if she returned cast and crew would all get a holiday.
Ambitions? "I'd love to do a Jennifer Lopez," she says, as she's summoned back to the set. "How does she do the whole acting-singing deal? Why isn't there a British version of her? I could do that." More interestingly, she's also a fan of mock-doc comedy such as the Alan Partridge shows and The Office, but accepts she'll never get the chance to be this naturalistic because of the imprint magnificent Mel has left on viewers.
"I know that whatever I do I'm not going to be watched by as many people ever again. My recurring fantasy is that Nicole Kidman breaks a leg and I get to do Moulin Rouge II. The nightmare? That I end up on Challenge TV hosting a late-night karaoke contest." Somehow, you can't see that happening ...
Tamzin Outhwaite Goes Wild With Dolphins, Thursday, 6 December, 9pm, BBC1
Red Cap will be shown on BBC1 later this month.
|
