I was sitting in the fashion cupboard at Cosmo sorting Jimmy Choo shoes

“I was sitting in the fashion cupboard at Cosmo sorting Jimmy Choo shoes, the lowest of the low Then the phone rang It was the agent I’d had as a child. But this was during the Kate Moss grunge period and Hawes openly admits she couldn’t stay skinny enough. “I really was the worst model of all time,” she says, “because my arse was too fat and I couldn’t be bothered to go on diets and things.” Eventually, she ended up doing work experience on magazines with the vague aim of applying to Rada Hawes can remember the exact moment her life changed. Then she was spotted by a modelling scout on Oxford Street and signed up by Select. We used to go on caravan holidays”), the Appleton sisters and Denise van Outen Hawes left home at 17 and worked in a casino. She badgered her mum for lessons and eventually got in on a free grant. She stayed for 10 years and school mates included Emma Bunton (“I lived with her for six months.

She is the youngest of four daughters born to a London cabbie. The family lived in Marylebone and every day she walked past the Sylvia Young stage school. I was constantly pestering Toby for titbits, ‘Did she mention me? What did she say?’ It was really quite sad.” Hawes doesn’t come from a theatrical background herself. Then finally, third time lucky, he gets hitched to me in The Best Man!” As for Stephens, “You want to take him home and tuck him up. He’s been so well brought up.” In fact Hawes worked with his mother Maggie Smith on The Last September and is an unabashed fan “She’s my role model I hold her in such high esteem, she’s faultless And hilarious, she’s got it all. Then I did Othello with him where he fancied a bit of Desdemona, but I was having none of it. In Wives and Daughters he came f on for one day and asked me to marry him, and I shoo-ed him off.

But it’s redeemed by a great cast (Hawes, Toby Stephens and Richard Coyle). “It was such a lovely experience filming with both of them,” she enthuses, “although it was very hard to keep a straight face They’ve just got funny bones I’ve worked with Richard twice before. Like so many ITV two-part dramas, it’s a love triangle where you spend most of your time playing spot the serial killer. The funny thing is when Matthew saw a screening, he was like, ‘Oooh’, and I said, ‘That’s not me!’ So good to know my own husband couldn’t tell.” Next she is a woman caught up in a volatile male friendship in the new ITV thriller, The Best Man.