The daughter of a black-cab driver, Hawes was a pupil at the stage school Sylvia Young, which was across the road from the family flat in Marylebone, London, a contemporary of Emma Bunton and Melanie Blatt. After leaving, she flirted with modelling (βI wasnβt very goodβ) and then, when she was 17, her agent rang to say she had a role in Dennis Potterβs Karaoke series. The call any actress would want, I say. Yes, she agrees. She didnβt have a clue who Potter was, of course. βBut now I know it was the call I always wanted,β she says, laughing.
2014 was a stellar year for Hawes, kicking off with the popular and critically acclaimed Line of Duty. She also filmed High-Rise, a feature film based on the nightmarish JG Ballard novel, alongside Tom Hiddleston and Sienna Miller, and played Elizabeth I in BBC Twoβs The Hollow Crown, a mini-series of Shakespeare adaptations (βthe most frightening thing Iβve ever doneβ) starring Dame Judi Dench. Both will come out later this year. It ended in glorious style with a role as a villainous banker in Doctor Who. βI was so excited because the children could finally watch me in something and then it came to the scene where Mummyβs head was crushed and they werenβt too sure about that.β
She doesnβt think she would have won any of those roles or Samantha Mollison if it hadnβt been for DCI Lindsay Denton in Line of Duty. Previous roles hadnβt allowed her to express her dark side. βAnd I really have got one,β she says drily. She has played a lot of cops before, most notably in Ashes to Ashes, the 1980s-set sequel to Life on Mars, which, against expectations, she managed to make her own, but the characters had often been on the more glamorous side of danger. Denton, however, was a complicated, corruptible, down-trodden, piano-playing mess. Goodie or baddie, it was anyoneβs guess. βLindsay really didnβt give a fβ if anyone liked her,β Hawes says. βThere was no vanity to her.β
A particularly memorable scene in the series showed Denton getting busy with a broken wine bottle and a neighbourβs head. βI thought there might be some sort of backlash against the physical violence there,β Hawes says. βBut it was amazing how many people came up and patted me on the back and said, ‘Oh, well done for that. Good on you!ββ
A slightly worrying reflection on the tastes of the British public perhaps, but still, Lindsay was the kind of three-dimensional female character who is even now a rarity on television. βIt does make you slightly want to scream when you do [a role] like that,β Hawes says, βand people say, ‘Oh, thatβs amazing. Oh, women can do that?β Like itβs some great surprise. Because why couldnβt we? It is frustrating.β
She thinks that people assume actresses wonβt want to play physically unappealing characters. βI was asked to do a role once where I would have had to have worn really bad false teeth. The director literally couldnβt believe that I wouldnβt get there on the day and say, ‘No, actually, forget it.β But I couldnβt wait to not have any make-up on. My vanity left me a long time ago.β She laughs. βIn my youth I was somebody who didnβt leave home without a bit of mascara. Thatβs all out the window now; I am not that person. Iβve got three children and I really donβt care. You go out a couple of times without make-up on and nobody acts any differently. Itβs fine.β
Hawes is 39 this month, heading into a traditionally difficult time for actresses. She, however, is optimistic that her age might work in her favour. βI think that you only have to look at our TV screens at the moment to see maybe there is a change happening, with Olivia Colman in Broadchurch, Maggie Gyllenhaal in The Honourable Woman and Gillian Anderson in The Fall. These arenβt 20-year-olds. These are women with a bit of life experience.β Also, she says, she doesnβt want to moan about the type of roles open to women when she has spent 20 years working quite happily. βIt would be an odd thing for me to bitch about, to be honest. And if that makes me not very feministβ¦β
But she is a feminist? βI am a feminist, but I canβt bitch about something that I havenβt directly experienced. Of course, there are a lot of window-dressing roles and you make the best of what you can out of that. You are not going to turn work down when you have a family, when you have bills to pay, and you have to work. It would be all well and good to say, ‘Iβm not going to work unless itβs some big meaty partβ¦β but you would fβing sit there for ever. You would be down the dole office.β
Endearingly, Hawes touches wood when she talks about work, although she and Macfadyen have clocked up an impressive number of screen hours between them. Which seems more impressive because they have three children (a son, aged 14, from Hawesβ brief first marriage, to the cartoonist Spencer McCallum, and a boy of eight and a girl of 10).
The day before we meet I read a Tweet pondering whether journalists would start asking the actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who has recently announced that he and his wife are expecting a child, how he will balance fatherhood and his career. What does Hawes think? βNo,β she replies. βNo, theyβre not. My husband, I donβt think, is ever asked the question, but I am every time I do something. Every single time. Itβs quite interesting, because I think our careers are quite similar, we are sort of on the same level, so you would think that as we are together and share our children it might be of interest, but no, he is just asked about his craft.β (For the record, they do share the childcare and they donβt have a nanny.)
There are signs that their youngest son may have inherited the thespian gene, having dressed up as an urchin extra on the set of Ripper Street, in which Macfadyen stars. βWhen Matthew got home, Ralph said, ‘Daddy, did I get the part?β and my husband said, ‘Well, itβs not really a part as such. Itβs more running around in the background.β Ralph replied, ‘In the background?β He was really disgusted. He thought that he and Matthew would be having a scene. He said, ‘But I wanted to wear a velvet top hat!ββ
Last year Hawes spoke openly about having suffered from depression on and off all her life. βThis weather doesnβt help, does it?β she says, gesturing to the wintry 3pm dusk. βThis country doesnβt help. But experience does help. You recognise the signs and what needs to be done. You need strategies personal to you.β Exercise, change of diet? βYes, all the things that people tend to recommend, that are the last thing you want to do when you are feeling like that. I suppose when workβs going well, that helps, but itβs not the cure. Having other people who rely on you, like three kids, forces you into not being in a state where you could stay in bed, because you just canβt.β
We talk about something else β being 40 and whether she is bothered (sheβs not) β and then she returns to the subject. βWhen I was walking the dog one day I saw a memorial quote on a bench: ‘Every day is the first day of the rest of your life.β And that kind of stuck with me as a mantra,β she says. βIβm someone who gets anxious. I worry about what people think of me and get over-emotional. I lie in bed thinking, ‘Oh God, I wish I hadnβt done that,β and think about things I said when I was a teenager! Itβs torture. But I read that and thought, ‘Give yourself a break.β Itβs not about what has been. Today is a new day. I know itβs wacky. Am I sounding like a lunatic?β she asks. No, I say, she really is not.
βThe Casual Vacancyβ starts this month on BBC OneΒ
And no more nekkid pictures ofΒ Keeley Hawes. But we do have plenty ofΒ Keeley Hazell Β … Hope youi don’t mind.