March to the top

As she left the grand country house in which she'd grown up to begin life as a boarder at Bedales, 16-year-old Nimmy March eyed the allowance cheque her father, the Duke of Richmond, had given her. It was, she noticed, £100 short of the figure she had requested. "Toothpaste, Tampax and tights money, he called it," laughs Nimmy, now 41. "He told me to calculate exactly how much I thought I'd need, then knocked £100 off and told me to see how I got on with that.

"He was determined that being brought up in a wealthy family would not distort our perspective." That kind of down-to-earth realism, engendered by Nimmy's parents in all five of their children, has stood her in good stead.

Hers is an extraordinary story - abandoned by her mother and adopted by the aristocracy, she experienced the kind of privileged life few enjoy.

Yet life as a mixed-race girl in a white family was never going to be a bed of roses - not even when the rose bed is in the grounds of one of Britain's most opulent estates. Despite her family's protection, Nimmy had to face the reality of racism from an early age. She then survived being raped, aged 19, but drew on her characteristic strength to survive the emotional torment that followed.

This inner strength carried her through her early years as an actress, helping her to ignore stark warnings that being black would bar her way to success.

Today she is radiant, sure of herself, happily married, the mother of two children, and perched on the brink of critical acclaim for her forthcoming role opposite Eddie Izzard in Channel 4's big new drama, 40.

"I've always had a need for acceptance. First, growing up as an adopted child, then through some difficult years at school and now professionally. I've always wanted to be accepted and therefore acceptable, it stems from being adopted. Maybe success is part of that.''

She was born the illegitimate daughter of a white mother and a black father in the Sixties. Adopted at six months by the Duke and Duchess of Richmond, she was transplanted from London's East End to the stately ancestral surrounds of Goodwood, their 12,000-acre West Sussex estate. Her four siblings include another adopted daughter who is also mixed-race.

When she was 11 her parents decided to inject some reality into her life by sending her to the local comprehensive, where she found she was the only black child among 1,100 pupils. "I didn't experience racism until then. But it was the mid-Seventies, the National Front was running rife and I experienced incredible unpleasantness. I had NF scored on my locker and was always being sent notes saying, 'Go back to the jungle, we don't want you here.'

"Luckily, mum was good at bringing me up with a strong sense of self. I understood that the racism was very much about them, not me, and I grew up with that absolute belief."

In the end she moved to Bedales, the exclusive, £6,000-a-term Hampshire school. It was there that she developed a talent for "mucking around" to make people laugh, initially because it made her feel accepted. But that talent led her to drama school. Despite being warned that being black and female could "make things tricky", she has pole-vaulted all expectations.

Now, after a series of roles in Coronation Street, London's Burning and Holby City, she stars in next week's Channel 4 drama 40, a darker and more compelling Cold Feet-style series. She plays ex-addict Anita, who is trying to kick her compulsion for drugs and for the dastardly Ralph, played by Izzard.

"I admit if I'd drawn up a list of irresistible actors, it wouldn't necessarily have included Eddie," says Nimmy over a cappuccino at a Turkish café near her home in Camberwell. "I mean, breathtaking brain and obvious intellect, absolutely. It's just that I never considered him sexually attractive."

She pauses, and widens her eyes to skilful comic effect. "But how wrong was I?" she says in a honeyed voice that is distinctly well-bred. It's true. Izzard is, especially given his penchant for fishnets and high heels, surprisingly authentic as Ralph. And as Anita, Nimmy does vulnerable recovery well. She researched the role by attending Narcotics Anonymous, but she's also obviously done her fair share of soul-searching - and recovery - which seems to have informed her portrayal.

She knows what it is to be vulnerable. When she was 19 she was raped in broad daylight by a stranger. She still does not feel able to talk about it. You sense that returning to the experience would undo all the efforts she has made to banish it from her mind. All she will say is that she recovered through sheer force of will. "I made a decision not to let others have supremacy over me. I couldn't let that guy and his unhappiness win."

Growing up black against the whiter-than-white backdrop of aristocratic Christianity cannot always have been easy, although she's blasé about the material side. Such an opulent childhood, surrounded by Canalettos and Van Dycks - not to mention the country's premier racecourse - may seem unusual to some.

But, as she's quick to point out, it's all she ever knew. The downside, however, was that she spent much of her childhood trying to fit in. "My parents always told me, 'If you want to know anything about your background, just ask.' But at the time I just wanted to be the same as them."

She was thrilled when people mistook her for her mother on the phone and deliberately avoided contact with the black Zulu woman her uncle married. She did not became close to her aunt until she was in her mid-teens.

She waited until she was 37 to have children of her own, but is now delighted by her toddlers, Khaya, three, and two-year-old Malachy. Their father, whom she married seven years ago, is Gavin Burke, 34, whom she met on a Buddhist course in France. He was a photographer but now works with autistic children.

Nimmy became a Buddhist 15 years ago, a decision her family has been "very accepting" of. Her first chant was for reconciliation with her adoptive father. "I love my father very much, but we are very different. I'm demonstrative and passionate and he's - well, he's a British duke.

Of all the stiff upper lips, his is the least stiff - he adopted two mixed-race kids, for God's sake - but I wanted to find a way to really connect with him." The reconciliabirthtion she actually found was with her birth father, a South African musician from Losotho called David Serame, whom she met 13 years ago.

She won't say more because she's writing the story herself. But it was the impetus that finally made her embrace her black roots.

Making peace with her natural father, she says, took the pressure off her relationship with her adoptive father. "Things were much more affable and easier between us after that." She then traced her

mother - but "she wanted nothing to do with me," she says with a matter-of-fact shrug. The experience prepared her for her role in 40, in which Anita and Ralph trace the son they gave up for adoption while in their teens.

"I used to really pain myself with it, but as I got older I realised that my birth mother was only 17, and doing what she thought was best." She still cherishes the idea that they may have contact one day, and there are four half-siblings she hopes to meet.

In the meantime, she's very close to her family, especially her brother, the Earl of March, and his wife. "He's terrifyingly handsome and dashing," she says with obvious pride. He runs the estate and lives in what she refers to as the "big house".

Her family are terrifically proud of her. Their line has always been, 'As long as you're happy ...'" And it's clear that, at last, she is.

40 begins a three-night run on Channel 4 next Tuesday at 10pm.