'I'm very happy to be defined by where I'm from'

Eve Myles - the Swansea Valley actress seen in Torchwood, Victoria, Doctor Who and The Crow Girls - is unmissable on our screens this autumn. She speaks to Lifestyle editor Kathryn Williams

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AS THE old saying goes, life is what you make of it, and for actress Eve Myles, this couldn’t be truer.

For someone whose career was seeded through “pure luck” at a dinner hour drama session at secondary school in the 1990s, the 47-year-old is surely at the height of her powers - this autumn alone she’s starred in ITV flagship dramas The Hack and Coldwater, while dominating BBC iPlayer demands with The Guest.

All chilling in their own way, the roles embodied by Eve include cold, controlling and manipulative businesswoman Fran in The Guest, real-life former detective and journalist Jacqui Hames in phone-hacking true-lifer The Hack and the unnervingly atheist vicar Rebecca in Coldwater.

These roles are bursting with individual character, personality and yet defined so specifically by being portrayed by Eve.

It’s also no surprise that one of her most famous roles, that of Torchwood’s Gwen Cooper, was written for her by legendary screenwriter Russell T Davies.

And the role that reignited her love of acting - Faith Howells in Keeping Faith, Eve's “most human” - pulled her back to the industry after she almost jacked it all in to go to medical school.

Where did that character come from - not the ones on screen, the real Eve?

Eve tells me that it’s groundwork laid way before acting was even a twinkle in her eye, in the love for her home, Ystradgynlais way up the top of the Swansea Valley and where she was raised, mainly, by her mother after he parents split up when she was just three.

“I'm talking to you now, and I'm stood there [at the top of the valley], I can see it,” she says. “Winters in Wales are long and they’re hard. I was brought up on a feisty estate with great people who looked after each other and had responsibility for each other and still do and that’s very special, and that's a strong thing in us.