FILM STAR . . . Ashley Jensen stars as DI June Robertson in new film The Legend of Barney Thomson
The 45-year-old, whose mother still lives in the town, joins Robert Carlyle, Emma Thompson and Ray Winstone in The Legend of Barney Thomson.
And the mother-of-one, who shot to fame in Extras and Ugly Betty, revealed on BBC Radio Scotland’s Janice Forsyth Show that she was surprised to be cast as Detective Inspector June Robertson.
She said: “When I first got the script I thought it had been sent to the wrong person because I don’t normally get cast in parts like that.
“I’m invariably someone’s best friend or someone who is a bit sympathetic and kind or silly and funny, but here was a wee bit of a rottweiler of a woman who is harder than Ray Winstone.”
But the award-winning actress, who will also star as Biscuit Woman in The Lobster this year, was delighted to accept the part.
The script follows a hapless barber devoid of charm and ‘patter’ until his mediocre and mundane life is transformed when he inadvertently stumbles into serial murder.
And as he makes ham-fisted attempts to cover his tracks, he finds himself on the run from the bearish Detective Inspector Holdall.
With his sanity threatening to unravel, he fatefully turns to his domineering, emasculating mother, Cemolina.
Commenting on her return to a UK lifestyle after a period in LA, Ashley, who now lives in Bath with her husband Terence Beesley and son Francis, said: “I wanted to be back here on my home turf rather than in America where people are so infatuated with pilot season.
“You find yourself reading a script and everyone is getting whipped up into a frenzy over a somewhat mediocre script and a somewhat mediocre part when I could be back in Britain doing stuff like The Legend of Barney Thomson or The Lobster.
“I consider myself initially a theatre actress that graduated onto TV and I feel quite lucky to be dipping my toe into this rather wonderful creative place of the independent film world.”
