Biography for
Lesley Sharp More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

1964, Liverpool, Merseyside, England, UK

Height

5' 5" (1.65 m)

Spouse

Nicholas Gleaves

(? - present) 2 children

Trivia

Graduated from Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 1982.

Parents were Scottish.

Grew up in Formby, which is north of Liverpool

Has an older sister.

Personal Quotes

I'm not so in love with acting that it's what I have to do, no matter what. It's about finding a connection, and those connections are rare: the people who you want to work with, they're not thick on the ground. There are months when I don't work. Also, I'm married and I have two children. When you go to drama school, you never stop to question it, but as you get older, other things become more important to you. For a long time, acting was the only thing I did. Now I've got something that puts it into perspective. Of course, it's not just actors, it's everyone who goes on that learning curve and learns that work is work and life is life and you have to get a healthy balance between the two. But it's tricky because I love to work and I get down if I don't. I like having time off, but I don't like it to go on for too long because then I start to feel a little lost.

I think there are some people who have those childhoods that are really bad and so what happens is that they find an escape through pretending to be other people. Or there's that really common thing with actors - their parents moved around a lot and they were always having to make new friends, so they entertained people doing funny voices. Or they got picked on and so they made jokes, were the class clown, as a defense mechanism. Or there are children who look around at what's going on and don't quite fit in. I think that's the kind of kid I was. It wasn't high drama, it wasn't terrible. It was just thinking I didn't want to be invisible.

If you play people who are in trouble, there are certain questions you will ask about a character, certain building blocks you will put into place before you start work. So you will have an idea, before you start work, of what they like to have for breakfast and how they like to get dressed in the morning. They are tiny things that never show on screen, but they are incredibly important. It's all in the detail.

Playgrounds are like microcosms of the world, aren't they? So you look around and you go, 'This is the world, is it? It doesn't work for me. I'm not the beautiful one, I'm not the popular one, I'm not the funny one. There are all these types and I'm not any of them.' And when you're not any of them, you're sort of invisible. I didn't want to be invisible. I don't know what I wanted to be, but it wasn't invisible.

It was that weird thing of wanting to be noticed but being incredibly embarrassed about it at the same time. You know when actors are very shy and self-effacing? Well, I really love it when people like my work, but I'm also really embarrassed about it. It's strange. And a bit pathetic really.