FULL NAME : Louise Brealey
DATE OF BIRTH : 27th March 1979
HEIGHT : 5ft3
HOME TOWN : Raunds, Northamptonshire
STUDIED : Studied history at Cambridge and spent a year at New York’s prestigious Lee Strasburg Institute.
PREVIOUS RELATIONSHIPS : Used to date actor Bryan Dick
SKILLS : Football and campanology
ON CHARACTER ROXANNE : ‘Roxanne seems to say and do everything wrong, which is highly inappropriate in a busy hospital where people are seriously ill. She means well, but she’s always messing up.’
SIMILARITIES WITH ROXY : ‘Like Roxy I can be incredibly scatty, but apart from that I think we’re very different. We’ve chosen very different careers for a start and she is a teenage mother. I haven’t got any kids secreted in my closet.’
ROXY’S BEST & WORST TRAITS : ‘Roxy is very well meaning and loving, but she doesn’t have a lot of sophisticated social graces. She tries to do the right thing, but often fails. She isn’t really ready to be a responsible parent. However I don’t think there’s anything malicious about her.’
REAL LIFE CASUALTY MOMENTS : ‘When I was four I went down the hill near my godmother’s house on a tricycle and had to have the inside of my mouth stitched up. I was a monster: it took five nurses to hold me down to apply the local anaesthetic, which they called Pussy Prickle.’
FAVOURITE FOOD: ‘I like everything that’s bad for me, especially school-dinner food like meat pies, mash, gravy and puddings. I despise sweetcorn and I don’t drink caffeine because it sends me completely insane.’
FAVOURITE MUSIC : ‘Music wise I like anything from Jeff Lynne’s The War of the Worlds to Radiohead, Leonard Cohen and The Smashing Pumpkins. I love new music but I’m actually a bit of a Radio 4 girl.’
HOW SHE KEEPS IN SHAPE : ‘I don’t. I’m one of those people who are always about to start something and never do. Pilates is next on my list. I love massages – does that count?’
HOW SHE RELAXES : ‘At the moment I’m learning the guitar (Derek is helping me in between scenes). I love watching black and white movies and reading. At the moment I’m crawling through a 300-page anthology of American literature. It keeps me off the streets!’
TELEVISION CREDITS : The Johnny Vaughan Film Show; I Love 1999; Casualty; Bleak House; The English Harem; Mayo; Green; Sherlock
FILM CREDITS : Carnt Sleep; Pennies from Heaven
RADIO CREDITS : I Will Tell
THEATRE CREDITS : Sliding with Suzanna; Tube!; Bloody Poetry; School for Scandal
AGENT : Peters, Fraser & Dunlop, Drury House, 34/43 Russell Street, London, WC2B 5HA.
DID YOU KNOW?
* Loo used to ring the bells at her local church
* Loo was sacked from a string of part time jobs throughout university, including a florist for flooding the shop, a sandwich factory for oversleeping on New Years Day, a book factory for reading the books instead of packing them and a restaurant for swearing at a customer.
* Loo played football for her college university and scored the winning goal in the Cambridge Women’s Cup quarter final.
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Continuing to act, Louise Brealey as she is now known, was most recently seen in BBC One Drama ‘Sherlock’. She is also a writer and was Deputy Editor of Wonderland magazine from 2008-09 and has interviewed stars such as Liv Tyler, Pet Shop Boys and Jude Law.
Twitter : @louisebrealey
