A WOMAN OF SUBSTANCE

Jenny Seagrove has famously starred in television series such as A Woman of Substance and Judge John Deed, films like Local Hero and Another Mother's Son, not to mention countless touring and West End plays.

- Peter Robertson

Ask the 65-year-old actress what most people have recognised her from and she says: "Mostly from Judge John Deed, even though that ended in 2007. Every now and then in the past people would say to me: 'Oh, I loved you in The Railway Children' which cracked me up. I think that's because I'm called Jenny and considered an English rose actress."

Jennifer Ann Seagrove was actually born and raised in Malaysia - where her dad Derek ran an import and export business - and her initial aim was to be a vet. "I was sent at nine to St Hilary's prep school in Godalming where the headmistress introduced me to poetry speaking. My interest in that led me to write and direct and star in my own plays. When I went on to Queen Anne's public school in Caversham, as I had short hair, I used to be the male leads in plays.

"But it was a very academic school and I was all set to become a vet having grown up with pet dogs and having a passion for animals. I got my science A-levels and I thought: 'I don't want to be a vet. I'd be a rotten vet because I'm far too sentimental, I'd just burst into tears if somebody asks me to put an animal down. What am I going to do?' I quite fancied being an actress, and I got into the Bristol Old Vic theatre school."

Things happened very quickly for Jenny. Her on-screen break was the 1981 television mini-series The Woman in White and the 1983 hit British film Local Hero of which she says: "That was important in putting me 'out there! I played Marina, a marine researcher and mystical character not of this world, maybe a mermaid, but the sea was so cold we had to redo one sequence because I turned blue.