A Class Act

With her chameleon-like skill for making every role she’s played totally convincing, Sheridan Smith has become one of our finest actresses.

- Linda Dearsley

When the role of Fanny Brice in Funny Girl was first suggested to 35-year-old Sheridan – star of dozens of prestigious productions – she was thrilled, then terrified. ‘I realised the enormity of it,’ she said, ‘Funny Girl hadn’t been done for 50 years and it’s famous for the amazing Barbra Streis and so, of course, I panicked. I thought,‘What was I thinking! There’s a reason it hasn’t been done for 50 years.’’

‘Then I thought, but it’s a story about Fanny Brice and I started to research her. I discovered she was not the usual woman of her time, but someone who broke the mould by getting into the Ziegfeld Follies with all those lovely women and did it by being a comedy turn and having funny bones. 

‘My idols have been people like Kathy Burke, Julie Walters and Maggie Smith. They have no vanity and if you can leave your vanity at the door you can laugh at yourself and the audience can laugh with you. I’ve always admired women who are quirky, gutsy and don’t care.’

Like Fanny Brice, Sheridan, who grew up in Lincolnshire, was performing from an early age, sometimes going on stage with her parents, Colin and Marilyn, who had a country music duo called The Daltons. Then, when she was in her teens, she won a place at the National Youth Music Theatre in London, which led to a role in Bugsy Malone and she’s hardly stopped working since. Also like Fanny, Sheridan has had her share of heartache – particularly when her beloved father died at the end of last year, but she’s pulled herself through it and got back on stage.

‘Not having been to drama school I always feel a bit of a fraud,’ she says, ‘but so far it looks as though they haven’t found out!’