Sally Phillips reflects on 'particularly low point' after her divorce, and what happens to your career if you 'don't do botox' as an actor
The actress brings her own brand of humour to breaking down life's difficult moments
Sally Phillips has given us some of the most iconic characters across TV and film in the last couple of decades.
Now, not only is she set to return to Smack The Pony as it's brought back 23 years after it finished airing, she's also going to light up screens in what's set to be an unmissable nostalgic crime series.
Airing from July 17, the six-part cosy drama The Hairdresser Mysteries, sees Sally's character, Lily, move from busy city hairdressing life in the 70s, to a small, quaint village for a slower pace of life.
But as the array of locals whose hair she cuts confide in Lily, she uses their secrets to unravel the village's mysteries. In the same way Sally brings warmth, humour and heart to her new character, she does the same with the real life challenges she faces.
During a recent interview with The Times, Sally reflected on a "low moment" after her divorce from former husband Andrew Bermejo, who left her in 2017 after 14 years of marriage - and the actress still manages to make light of it.
"I did an online advert for Laughing Cow cheese just after my husband left me," she says, adding, "That was a particularly low divorce point." However, she always tries to look for the positives in life, and has no qualms about taking on anything that "people might snigger at."
She once presented an award to a man who'd cleaned "the same 600,000 square feet of hospital for 60 years and it meant so much to him," which made her feel, "my life is really rich actually."
The actress also jokes about the direction her career is heading in because she doesn't "do" botox.
"There was a year in which I played four different women dying of cancer," she says, adding, "I thought, maybe that is just what happens if you don’t do botox - people think you look really unwell."
Sally also talks about the joy and the challenges of having a child with Down's Syndrome - her 21-year-old son Olly has the condition.
While he's faced difficulties in his life, Sally reports, "It’s really important to say that Olly’s life is not bad at all," adding, "Olly loves his life and I want people to know that I have had such an amplified life through knowing Olly too, and all his friends."
The actress feels that "society works hard to try and keep people separated" and "we work hard to make it appear people don’t exist," alluding to it being difficult for her son to find a place in society.
She wants to remedy this, and does so by asserting she'll "write things that have people with Down’s syndrome in them," revealing, "I’m about to do a Down’s syndrome dance film and I’ve also written a Down’s syndrome rom-com.”
Unsurprisingly, she has a similarly positive attitude to her work, and says she was asked by The Hairdresser Mysteries creator, Jim Cartwright, "Can we make the nation feel better?" with the series.
"I like that - let us see," she says, revealing that she doesn't worry if something she works on is "a dreadful failure" as long as it tries something new.
Her latest series certainly sounds like it will fit the brief of bringing something a little different, and Sally concludes, "Why bother doing what someone’s already done?"
The Hairdresser Mysteries airs on BBC One and BBC iPlayer from July 17.
