Television: From tripe to diamonds

Warm, friendly Natasha Little is nothing like her cold, calculating character Becky Sharp - but she just can't help liking her. FRANCES GRANT finds out why.

Life is harsh, cruel and dog-eat-dog. But Becky Sharp, clawing her way up from the slag heap to high society, can work with that.

The scheming, lying anti-heroine of William Thackeray's 19th century novel Vanity Fair has all the vices of any modern femme fatale and more. She has a very strong stomach.

Becky Sharp is the kind of woman who can steel herself to swallow a plate of steaming tripe in the interest of her own social advancement. Tripe today, diamonds tomorrow.

Natasha Little, the 29-year-old English actor who plays Becky in this latest BBC adaptation of the Victorian literary classic, does not boast such intestinal fortitude.

"My God, I can still smell it," she says of the scene in which her character sits down to dine on tripe with her lecherous, rotten-toothed employer Sir Pitt Crawley.

It's early in the morning in London when I phone and a cruel hour to revive the memory of such culinary horror. But Little is all warm and friendly co-operation.

Unlike the cold and scheming Sharp, you see, Little is nice. She is working nights filming and the call is a day earlier than expected, but that's absolutely fine, she says. "It's a very reasonable hour." No need to explain, then, she's nothing like her wicked character.

Little has lived and breathed Becky Sharp for the six months it took last year to shoot the lavish and meticulously staged drama.

Although since then she has made two feature films and a television series for Channel 4, she assures us that the connection with Becky Sharp is very much alive.

At the Baftas she had been nominated for best actress for her portrayal of Becky and Vanity Fair was up for best drama. She didn't win, and Vanity Fair was pipped by contemporary drama A Rather English Marriage. But Little noted that being nominated alongside such luminaries as Dame Thora Hird, Joanna Lumley and Francesca Annis has brought benefits.

She is not above a Becky Sharp-style revel in the glory. After the interview she's off to borrow something to wear for the occasion from Brit fashion queen Vivienne Westwood and the house of Versace.

"They're going to lend me some lovely diamonds so that's quite a nice day, isn't it? It's a bit of a Becky Sharp day, actually, I'm going to get some gorgeous jewels."

That could, indeed, make playing a vixen worthwhile. The reality of the tripe, though, has another point. Sharp is cold and cruel, but her life was not a bed of roses.

Many people have had a lot to say about the character of Becky Sharp and her grotesque fellow creatures of Vanity Fair. Thackeray defended his novel of social realism and satire on the follies of his time by saying: "What I want is to make a set of people living without God in the world ... greedy, pompous, mean, perfectly self-satisfied for the most part and at ease with their superior virtue."

Modern critics have called the flirtatious, sexual Sharp "irreligious and immoral." Andrew Davies, writer of this latest adaptation of Thackeray's novel for the screen, puts her essence in modern terms: Becky can "pull any bloke she wants."

But he, too, has had second thoughts: "You just think that cheeky arrogant selfishness is so very attractive at the beginning. But then you start to think, 'my God, I wouldn't like to be mixed up with her'."

Those who revile Sharp should wake up and smell the boiled cow's stomach, however.

Little loved Becky from the moment she read for the part.

"I don't think she's cruel really," she says. "I think she just doesn't necessarily take responsibility for her actions. I don't think she does things to be spiteful or evil, she just goes for what she wants and unfortunately people might get a little bit hurt."

People get hurt a lot by the woman who knows how to make the most of her "famous frontal development." But she is still vulnerable, says the actor who has spent months with the script and the novel searching for the psychology behind the character.

In contrast, Becky's best friend Amelia, the put-upon female doormat, is a drip. Little agrees: "Yeah, she needs a good slap really."

Strange she should mention that. For Little's previous major outing on local screens was as Rachel, the aspiring lawyer in the innovative British drama This Life (now repeating on TV4) - a series in which Little's character was rewarded for her manipulations with a well-deserved knuckle sandwich.

Fallout from that role was predictable and may explain why Little sports a much darker wig as Becky in Vanity Fair. "Cool blond, Hitchcock blond," were some of tags she earned.

"Which is odd. I'm not cool at all, I'm the least cool person I know. I have this sense of humour which is about as sophisticated as a seven-year-old schoolboy. I get very overexcited and silly."

That hasn't been in evidence in this interview. "I've just woken up," she says. "I was desperately trying to hide that at the beginning, not very well, obviously."

It's convincing. Becky Sharp would leave Little for dead when it comes to faking and dissembling. No, she's not like that. But there's still something about the arch manipulator which Little can't shake. "To me, she could get away with anything." she says. "I find myself talking about her like she's a real person."

And you can't beat a bunch of sparklers for putting a twinkle in a woman's eye, even one loath to say she would count diamonds as a best friend.

Don't discount the "head rush" that half a million quid of borrowed jewels can cause, says Little. "It's not me at all, I don't wear jewellery. But I've never seen anything like it. They are extraordinary, you can't take your eyes off them. Listen to me, I've become obsessed with diamonds."

From a plate of tripe to a clutch of diamonds. Little can afford to forgive herself a day's indulgence. It seems a just reward for living for a half a year with Becky Sharp.

Who: Natasha Little

What: Vanity Fair

Where: TV One

When: Sunday, 8.30 pm.