Lesley Sharp

Lesley Sharp
Born	1964 (age 47–48) Liverpool, Lancashire, England
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1986–present
Spouse	Nicholas Gleaves (1994–present)

Lesley Sharp (born 1964 in Liverpool, Lancashire) is an English stage, film and television actress, particularly well known for her variety of British television roles including Clocking Off, Bob & Rose and afterlife.

Early life

Adopted as the second daughter of mature Scottish parents, Sharp grew up in Formby, Lancashire. Childhood holidays were spent in Edinburgh, where "every fucking summer it rained". Sharp started acting because, as a child, she felt "invisible" and didn't "quite fit in." She has said that her inspiration to act came from watching Dick Emery on television. Her father worked for the Inland Revenue and was not keen on her taking up acting, preferring her to follow in his footsteps by becoming a civil servant. Her adoptive mother died of cancer when Sharp was 15. The adoption was never a secret in the family, but it was only after leaving home that she met her genetic mother — a working class woman unable to keep her because the father was a married man.

Sharp moved to London at 18 and, after initially failing to get into drama school, worked at the Department of Education and Science at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Responsible for filling in the warders' overtime sheets, her poor numeracy skills resulted in frequent mistakes before she was eventually asked "very nicely, but firmly" to leave.

Sharp attended the Guildhall School of Music and Drama from 1982.

Career

Sharp's screen debut was in Alan Clarke's Rita, Sue and Bob Too (1986), playing Bob's wife, Michelle. She appeared in another Clarke-directed project, as Valerie in the filmed version of Jim Cartwright's successful stageplay Road (1987).^{[citation needed]} Further film appearances included supporting roles in The Rachel Papers (1989) and Stephen Poliakoff's Close My Eyes, with Clive Owen and Alan Rickman. Sharp was establishing herself as a talented actress and social realist roles in Mike Leigh's Naked (1993) and the Jimmy McGovern-penned Priest (1994) further raised her profile. By the time she was in Prime Suspect 4: The Lost Child (1995) and The Full Monty (1997) she had become a well-known performer in Britain.^{[citation needed]}

Although Sharp has appeared in a variety of films throughout her career, she is probably best known by television audiences. By the late 1990s, she was being offered lead roles in numerous well-written — mostly northern-set — drama series. Common As Muck (1997) was followed by Playing the Field (1998–2002), a drama about a female football team which ran for five series. Sharp had supporting parts in Great Expectations (1999), as Mrs Joe, and in Nature Boy (2000), as Martha Tyler, before landing the role of Trudy Graham in Paul Abbott's BAFTA-award-winning Clocking Off (2000–03), which lasted four series. Russell T Davies then cast her opposite Alan Davies in Bob & Rose, which resulted in a BAFTA nomination for Sharp.^{[citation needed]} Further film roles in From Hell, starring Johnny Depp, and Cheeky (1993), which was directed by Naked co-star David Thewlis, preceded another television drama written by Russell T. Davies. In The Second Coming (2003) Sharp was "the woman who killed God" in the form of Stephen Baxter, as played by Christopher Eccleston.

Sharp again worked with Mike Leigh in Vera Drake (2004) which was followed by one-off television dramas including Planespotting, Born with Two Mothers and Our Hidden Lives, all in 2005.^{[citation needed]} The same year, she played the clairvoyant lead role of Alison Mundy opposite Andrew Lincoln's sceptical Robert Bridge in ITV's supernatural drama series Afterlife. Although the subject matter was seen as quite controversial, it was generally received positively by critics and audiences.^{[citation needed]} Sharp's performance was highly praised and she was nominated for several awards.^{[citation needed]} She commented, in a This Morning television interview, that the guest stars — including Natalia Tena, David Threlfall and Mark Benton — for the second series "were amazing".^{[citation needed]}

After a ten-year break from stagework, October 2005 saw Sharp return to the theatre as Emma in Sam Shepard's The God of Hell at the Donmar Warehouse.^{[citation needed]} In what she described as "a black comedy about the poison at the heart of America", she was directed by her friend Kathy Burke — someone she had previously competed with for screen roles. Sharp concentrated on theatrical work for the next few years,^{[citation needed]} until re-appearing on television screens in 2008 in the three-part Lucy Gannon-penned drama The Children. Later in 2008, she worked with Russell T. Davies for a third time when she played Sky Silvestry in the Doctor Who episode "Midnight". Davies later tipped Sharp to become the first woman to play The Doctor.

Early 2009 saw Sharp playing Petronella Van Daan in the BBC's new version of The Diary of Anne Frank. Next up was a role, playing Paddy Considine's wife, in Channel 4's acclaimed drama series Red Riding. She then joined the cast in the BBC daytime drama series Moving On, for which Jimmy McGovern was the executive producer. Sharp played Sylvie, a woman whose life becomes dominated by fear, in ""Butterfly Effect", the last of five individual stories. Sharp starred in a 2009 revival of The Rise and Fall of Little Voice at the Vaudeville Theatre with Marc Warren and Diana Vickers, which ran from October to the following January.

Personal life

Sharp has been married to Bolton-born actor Nicholas Gleaves since 1994. They have two sons and live in London.

In an interview relating to Afterlife, Sharp stated that she is "not religious", and thinks "you should live your life as if it's all there is."

List of credits

Television

Year	Title	Role	Network	Notes
1994	Dandelion Dead	Constance Martin	LWT	mini-series
1995	Prime Suspect	Anne Sutherland	ITV	Series 4, "The Lost Child"
1999	Playing the Field	Theresa Mullen	BBC One	Series 2, Episode 2
1999	Daylight Robbery	Carol Murphy	ITV
2000–2001	Clocking Off	Trudy Graham	BBC One	Series 1, 2
2001	Bob and Rose	Rose Cooper	ITV
2003	The Second Coming	Judith Roach	ITV	two-part drama
2005–2006	afterlife	Alison Mundy	ITV
2008	Doctor Who	Sky Silvestry	BBC One	Series 4, Episode 10 "Midnight"
	The Children	Anne	ITV	mini-series
2009	The Diary of Anne Frank	Petronella Van Daan	BBC One
	Red Riding	Joan Hunter	Channel 4	Part 2 "In the Year of Our Lord 1980"
	Moving On	Sylvie	BBC One	Series 1, Episode 5 "Butterfly Effect"
2010	Agatha Christie's Poirot	Miss Martindale	ITV	Series 12, Episode 4 "The Clocks"
2010	Whistle and I'll Come to You	Hetty the nurse	BBC2
2011	"Leah's Story"	Narrator	ITV1 HD
2011	Scott & Bailey	DC Janet Scott	ITV1 HD
2011	The Shadow Line	Julie Bede	BBC 2

Film

Year	Title	Role
1986	Rita, Sue and Bob Too	Michelle
1987	Road	Valerie
1989	The Rachel Papers	Jenny
1993	Naked	Louise Clancy
1994	Priest	Mrs. Unsworth
1997	The Full Monty	Jean
2001	From Hell	Catherine Eddowes
2004	Vera Drake	Jessie Barnes
2008	Inkheart	Mortola

Theatre

In October 2005, Sharp starred in her first theatre role for a decade in the play The God of Hell at the Donmar Warehouse, London.^{[citation needed]}

In 2008, she played the lead character in the play Harper Regan at Royal National Theatre.^{[citation needed]}

External links

• Lesley Sharp at the Internet Movie Database
• Voice agency LipService.co.uk