'A bit of snogging would be fine': Actress Rebecca Front on why she longs to get to grips with a love scene

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She has played downtrodden and dowdy, and is starring as a beleaguered headteacher in this summer’s blockbuster Horrid Henry: The Movie,
but actress Rebecca Front would love to be the on-screen love interest once in a while

'I don't feel like a grown-up, which is fine in acting because it¿s child's play,' says Rebecca

Now listen up, all you Slick Willie television commissioning executives: a grave injustice is being perpetrated on the typecasting couch. Bafta-winning comic actress Rebecca Front, aka rookie government minister Nicola Murray in the barbed political satire The Thick of It, Chief Superintendent Jean Innocent in crime drama Lewis, and wheelchair-bound Cathy Cole in the pitch-black comedy Nighty Night is – how can I put this? – really rather gorgeous if you’d only let her slip into a glamorous Roland Mouret frock and a pair of Gaga-meets-Dorothy sparkly red heels.

Yes, she may be a dab hand at character acting, with faultless timing and a fabulous line in frayed-round-the-edges vulnerability. But just look how she smoulders in our photo shoot, wide-eyed coquettishness right on cue. Groomed hair, a slash of carmine lipstick and she’s neither demoralised and dowdy nor a ballbreaker, but a shoo-in for the leading lady. ‘I always seem to play the wife or, increasingly, the mother, or bewildered victims, or intimidating high-flyers,’ Rebecca observes drily. ‘It would be a nice change to be the love interest, provided there were no sex scenes – although a bit of snogging would be fine. More than fine, actually. I did once have to snog Lenny Henry for something or other and I can tell you that it was very pleasant.’

Back in her yummy-mummy civvies – Monsoon linen trousers, loose white shirt, Boden sleeveless cardie and bang-on-trend red Converse All Stars – Rebecca, who has a son aged 12 and a ten-year-old daughter, confesses that she is surprised by how much she enjoys hamming it up in front of the camera. ‘If I think myself into a character who is a bit over the top then I’m fine,’ she says.

Of late, over the top has most definitely been the order of the day. Despite a professional reputation built on her deft ability to bring depth and complexity to every role – not always a given in comedy circles – her less-is-more approach has been jettisoned with her breakthrough into the cinematic big time. She has landed a plum part in the high-octane Horrid Henry: the Movie, starring Anjelica Huston and Richard E Grant, which looks destined to be the children’s 3D blockbuster of the summer. Rebecca is portraying ditsy-yet-engaging headmistress Miss Oddbod, valiantly struggling to save her school from the twin evils of Horrid Henry and the threat of closure, and she’s clearly having a blast.

From left: Rebecca as Mrs Oddbod in Horrid Henry; as Nicola in The Thick of It with Peter Capaldi and Chris Addison

Playing Cath in Nighty Night opposite Julia Davis

‘It’s not my subtlest performance,’ she smiles. ‘But it was great fun. My kids loved the books. And it was also amazing working with Anjelica Huston, who is a proper movie star. She plays Henry’s terrifying teacher, Miss Battleaxe, and was really lovely, friendly, professional; one night, when a few of us went out to dinner, she joined us. We spent the evening on our best behaviour having terribly grown-up conversations, and then when she left we were clutching each other like starstruck teenagers and crying, “That was Anjelica Huston! We’re on first-name terms with Anjelica Huston!”’

Rebecca is funny and self-deprecating but has a watchful intelligence too, never overstepping the mark, steering clear of indiscretion. She strives to keep her home life private, declining to name her children or husband even while conceding, with a roll of her eyes, that anyone can look them up on the internet. He apparently works in the media doing something ‘so complicated that it’s not even worth trying to explain’. She is, she says firmly, in her mid-40s, ‘I used to tell everyone my age, but then I realised that no other actress does, so I stopped.’ Born in London and brought up, along with her brother, in Ilford, Essex, by her artist father and teacher mother, she studied at Oxford, where she started acting alongside actor and writer Patrick Marber, and met Armando Iannucci and Steve Coogan. Thereafter she appeared in a series of innovative, sometimes controversial comedies: news spoof The Day Today and chat-show take-off Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge.

In Nighty Night, the hilariously mordant sitcom about a sociopathic beautician, played by Julia Davis, Rebecca’s downbeat stoicism in the face of both multiple sclerosis and her husband’s (Angus Deayton) philandering, lent her an excruciating watchability. In Grandma’s House, the sitcom by former Never Mind the Buzzcocks host Simon Amstell, she is by turns sweet and infuriating as Amstell’s stereotypical Jewish mother Tanya. In last Christmas’s BBC adaptation of Richmal Crompton’s Just William books, she played William’s mother. But it was her fabulously nuanced role as Nicola Murray in the second series of Iannucci’s The Thick of It that won her the best comedy actress Bafta last year.

‘I’d seen the first series of The Thick of It and thought it was brilliant, and the thought did occur
to me that it might be nice to pop up as an MP. Then Armando phoned me while I was cooking dinner for the kids and started telling me about the second series. I couldn’t really hear him as I was frying something, so I stopped listening and just made encouraging noises, when he suddenly demanded, “So, will you do it?” Afterwards, he told me I sounded very casual, saying, “Yeah, great.” But once I replaced the receiver I was hopping up and down, squealing with sheer excitement.’

It’s no secret that The Thick of It is watched and enjoyed in Westminster, and Rebecca has met quite a few politicians who are fans of the show and of Malcolm Tucker’s sweary, screaming spin doctor. Or not. Ken Livingstone had a sense of humour bypass about the various venal politicos, and dismissed it as ‘unfunny and aggressive’, but many of his peers take it less personally.

‘I think politicians are fascinating people,’ Rebecca says. ‘They go into politics with a sense of altruism and duty but also a desire for power; however nice they are, there’s a steeliness in their pursuit of that power. They are fighting for survival the whole time, which can lead them into telling lies because they really do feel it’s for the sake of the right principle. I have had a number of MPs taking me aside and telling me about incidents far more outrageous than any of our story lines.’

Her own politics she prefers to leave as a source of conjecture, although she has written for the
left-leaning press. Her admiration is generously cross-party, however: London mayor Boris Johnson she describes as ‘exactly what you’d expect: so relaxed in himself, with a confidence that is quite attractive to voters’. She adds, ‘I really liked Neil Kinnock when I met him, and Tessa Jowell strikes me as being a genuine person. I thought Chris Patten was tremendously bright and Simon Hughes is witty. I did a review of the papers once with Michael Portillo, who used to be such a hate figure, and he was outstandingly charming. I went home thinking “What a nice man!”, then doing a double-take at myself.’

It’s easy to believe – anyone so accustomed to analysing characters, their motivations and foibles, invariably finds it hard to switch off. When watching television dramas she becomes so distracted by the script and the actors’ interpretations that for sheer pleasure she prefers to settle down in front of a documentary, such as Who Do You Think You Are?, or maybe something about philosophy or literature. It’s for her fluency – she does scriptwriting as well as performing – and broad range of interests that she has appeared on Newsnight more than once. ‘I was asked along ostensibly to talk about the state of the nation from a comic point of view, but when I arrived I found myself on a panel with Martin Amis and A S Byatt – magnificently brainy people – speaking about all sorts of clever things and thinking, “Oh God, I am so out of my depth here.” For that reason I turned down Question Time, because I haven’t got enough well-informed opinions and I would come across as an idiot.’

That seems highly unlikely, but Rebecca is shrewd enough to pick and choose her gigs. This includes careful consideration of her mode of transport as she suffers from claustrophobia and won’t travel by tube or in a lift. Returning from a holiday with her family once, she became so panicked by the prospect of boarding a packed underground train to take her from one terminal to another that she ‘flipped’. ‘I couldn’t take the lift back up to ground level and there were no stairs, so I eventually had to escape by clambering up the down escalator; I cut open my knee and there was blood everywhere and I was in a complete state.’ She is now a patron of the charity Anxiety UK, which supports people who suffer extreme ‘mental discomfort’ in similar everyday situations.

‘I certainly don’t feel like a grown-up, and nor do most people,’ she says. ‘It’s fine in acting because it’s considered child’s play, but there are people out there dressed in adult clothes, running a business empire or the country, thinking, “I hope nobody finds out I’m 12.”’

Which brings us neatly back to Horrid Henry, an anarchist craftily disguised as a child. ‘I was a bit of a creep at school,’ says Rebecca. ‘I made it to head girl and would have been terribly disapproving of Henry’s disruptive antics back then.’ But little of that prissiness remains today, and she is the very embodiment of liberal parenting. ‘For years, the kids only knew I was an actress because other people told them so. Then we decided to let them see The Thick of It, although not before a serious lecture on swearing. But one of the reasons I was so delighted to do the Horrid Henry movie was that at last I could let them see something that would be suitable viewing for children.’

Rebecca is bound to dazzle on the red carpet, but isn’t she worried about exposing her children to the paparazzi at the premiere? ‘We’re already arguing about it,’ she says. ‘My daughter has chosen her outfit, but I’m thinking Michael Jackson had the right approach: the kids can come, but only if they wear scarves over their faces.’ She’s joking. Isn’t she?

Horrid Henry: The Movie will be in cinemas on 29 July

Rebecca’s Hot List

BOOK This is going to make me sound like a bluestocking, but I’m reading Little Dorrit, because I love Dickens.

MUSIC Again, sorry to be so highbrow, but I’m currently fixated on Bach’s adagios.

ACCESSORIES Great big chunky rings, real knuckle-dusters to add a sprinkling of showbiz bling.

BEAUTY PRODUCT Clarins Beauty Flash Balm — it’s like having a mini face-lift, very refreshing and smells nice too.

STYLE ICON Katharine Hepburn. I love her linen trousers and sharp shirts. Effortless elegance.

SAVING UP FOR An iPad.