Traumatic love

Life has a way of throwing up surprises," sighs actress Keeley Hawes, and after the year she has just had, she is more than qualified to talk. As one of the stars of BBC's popular spy drama, Spooks, still only 25 and considered by many in the business to be one of the industry's real rising talents, her professional life certainly looked good. Personally, too, things looked good. She had married cartoon designer Spencer McCallum in December and not long afterwards had remarked: "I feel more secure somehow."

But as Keeley says, surprises do occasionally rear their head and many people were stunned when it was announced in May that she had left her husband for Spooks co-star Matthew Macfadyen. She moved out of the Surrey home she had shared with McCallum just three months after their wedding, ending a relationship that had lasted four years and leaving the couple to sort out what arrangements they could make for their two-year-old son, Myles.

So it has been a testing time, to say the least, and come Monday, it could prove even more testing as the Spooks cast reconvene to start shooting the second series. She is speaking for the first time since those traumatic weeks in May when news of their affair broke.

"I'm sure it'll be a little strange," says Keeley cautiously, "and I really haven't a clue what it's going to be like. I've never worked with a boyfriend before," she blushes, "and there'll probably be a lot of childish laughing and ridiculousness. From everyone - myself included."

Well, quite possibly. But, then, poor Keeley won't have too much time to be embarrassed because come the following Wednesday, she'll have an awful lot more to blush about. Tipping The Velvet, starting on BBC2 next week, is set to be the most sexually explicit period drama ever screened on British television.

Based on the 1998 book by Sarah Waters and dubbed a "lesbian Moll Flanders" (the book's title is a reference to oral sex), the story, set in the 1890s, tells of a lesbian love affair between male impersonator music hall star Kitty Butler (played by Hawes) and the central figure of Nan Astley, played by Diana Rigg's daughter, Rachael Stirling.

Andrew Davies, who adapted the novel, and whose previous writing credits include TV's Pride And Prejudice-Vanity Fair and Moll Flanders, admitted that the drama would be "absolutely filthy" and added, with a little touch of schoolboyishness, that men were "going to love it".

Certainly, looking at Keeley sitting in front of me in a north-London cafe, all huge eyes, cutely bobbed hair and looking as freshly scrubbed as an infant school teacher, it seems hard to imagine that she will be playing her part in some of the most graphic sexual scenes ever to hit the TV screens, with promised delights including oral sex and indeed some extremely vigorous action focusing around a leather sex toy.

"It is basically a very sweet story about two girls with an amazing love for one another," says Keeley. "But it's a lot of fun and a good romp and a very intimate series. You'll feel like you're almost there."

According to Keeley, her own scenes are rather tame. "Oral sex? There's a bit of that, but I'm under the covers so you don't see a lot. There's a lot of tongues and a lot of girl-on-girl action and some heterosexual sex with me and John Bowe (who plays her husband, Walter Bliss), although you don't get to see that. "But Anna Chancellor (who plays the sexually voracious Diana Lethaby) gets to do all the darker stuff with strapons and things. She called the scenes between Rachael and me vanilla and looked slightly bored with them, although I have to say, Rachael deserves a medal for all stuff she has to do. To be honest, when I read the script, I didn't think it was too shocking. I mean, is it?" she laughs nervously. "And in any case, I was more worried about having to sing than I was about the love scenes.

"People do have this thing about girl-on-girl stuff, but lesbian sex scenes are no different to do than heterosexual sex scenes and because I knew Rachael from before, it was slightly easier. We did all our love scenes in one bedroom in one afternoon, although I do admit, I did have to fortify myself. We had a couple of glasses of wine and a bar of Galaxy and off we went. It was quite nice, actually," she adds, giggling.

Well, you've got to admire the girl's honesty. This is her only interview for the drama and although you might expect her to come out with the "I'm-only-disrobing-for-my-art" spiel, she is surprisingly down-toearth and open about the programme and more personal matters.

"Is my family going to watch? Oh God, yes!" she exclaims. "And they're particularly excited about the prospect of me singing. Are they going to be shocked? Well, I don't think anything I do surprises them any more, especially after the year I've had. The sex scenes kind of pale into insignificance."

She is, of course, referring to her marriage split and her affair with Macfayden, a topic which she clearly finds hard to discuss and yet still answers all questions on the subject terribly politely. "It has been a difficult year, a very difficult year," she says, fiddling with the bottle of water in front of her, "and you really have no idea sometimes that events which come up would ever come up.

"It's all levelling out now and things are getting better, I wouldn't want to say things are looking up though - that's the wrong expression. You never set out in life to hurt people - I mean, no one does it intentionally, do they? Although, at the time, people find that hard to see."

Keeley starts ripping the label off the bottle. "Did I marry too young? I don't know. I don't think so. My mum married at 21 and she's still married, so who can say? I really did want to get married and I'd been with Spencer for a few years and thought it was the right thing. But you can never know what's round the corner and I think things are either right or they're not, and they weren't right."

Did the strains of the job have an effect on married life? "Well, actors are known for whingeing about the perils of the job and, in truth, it's a great job, it really is. But because of the odd working hours and the time away from home, it's quite difficult to maintain a healthy home life, yes." And was meeting Macfadyen the cause of the marriage break-up? "It would have happened anyway," says Keeley softly, believe her or not.

The care of the couple's son Myles is split between them. "I have him for half the week and my husband has him for the other half. The most important thing is that he is okay."

Keeley now lives in London, although not with Macfadyen. "Oh no, no no! We're just pootling along at the moment and seeing how things go. Are there any plans to get married? Oh God! Let me get divorced first."

She insists that it wasn't a case of love at first sight with Macfadyen, "and, really, we were just friends to begin with. All of us got on so well on Spooks and it's quite unusual to go on set like that and get on really well with everyone, especially when the filming goes on for months. But," she shrugs, "we'll just have to wait and see. My family have been great and very supportive."

They were supportive, too, of her modelling career when she was 16. She was spotted by a modelling scout on Oxford Street and joined Select modelling agency, ending up doing shoots for magazines such as Company and Just 17. "I really was the worst model of all time because my arse was too fat and I couldn't be bothered to go on diets and things," she laughs.

After 18 months she gave it all up to work as an assistant in the fashion department of Cosmopolitan magazine and then one day, got the call from her agent telling her that she had been cast in Potter's Karaoke. Roles in TV's The Moonstone, The Beggar Bride and Our Mutual Friend followed and Keeley was back acting, "which was what I'd always wanted to do".

In fact, when she was 11 she joined the Sylvia Young stage school a few doors away from her home, where classmates included her friend Emma Bunton, Denise Van Outen, Dani Behr and Nicole and Natalie Appleton.

Nicole, of course, hit the headlines recently when she claimed that her record company put pressure-on her to abort Robbie Williams's baby and bore the brunt of much condemnation for blaming the corporation without taking responsibility herself.

"It was pretty sad to read of Nicole's abortion," says Keeley, "and there's so much that goes on in people's private lives that you'd just never know about. It was unfair of people to condemn her though, because you just never know what things life might throw at you."

Keeley stops and inspects that water bottle once more. It's a lesson she has learned only too well herself.

Tipping the Velvet begins on Wednesday 9 October, 9pm, BBC2.