New Heights

She was Anya in The Cherry Orchard with Diana Rigg and Maureen Lipman at the Chichester Festival Theatre; appeared in George Gently, the BBC crime series with Martin Shaw; and is going to star in Wuthering Heights as Cathy Earnshaw with Tom Hardy (Stuart: A Life Backwards; RocknRolla) as her Heathcliff on ITV early next year. The production is directed by Coky Giedroyc, who also directed Oliver Twist on TV and is the sister of Mel and Sue comedienne Mel Giedroyc. Charlotte revelled in the filming: 'It's my kind of thing. I love love stories, particularly tragic ones. People don't love like that any more. Their relationship exists in isolation in this desolate place and it can only exist like that because of the setting.' As is perfectly clear from her postcard to us, Charlotte maintains a charming enthusiasm about her good fortune. On getting the Wuthering Heights role, she has said: 'I was doing The Cherry Orchard when I found out I'd got the part. I rang my mum and dad. It was a beautiful sunny day outside and I was jumping up and down like a big kid. I was just so excited with the potential of the part.'

Her father, Michael, is an engineer who runs his own business with her brother, Simon, who's ten years older. Her mother, Margaret, is a haematology nurse and a bereavement counsellor. They live in County Durham and Charlotte stuck close to home when she went to university in Durham, studying English language and linguistics.

Where she grew up is still important to her - she talks with a pleasant Northern accent and is dressed for our interview at The Levin Hotel just behind Harrods like an urchin from the Hovis ads in a flat cap, Oxfam jacket and a brooch an elderly neighbour gave her.

She's the kind of girl who gets glowing reports from the folks back home and, sure enough, her old headmaster at Teesside High School rolls up to say he's 'extremely proud of Charlotte. Staff remember her as a very bright, enthusiastic girl, and it is no surprise to us that her career has taken off.'

She used her intelligence, as well as her striking good looks, to break into acting. 'I didn't really do any of the serious drama stuff,' she recalls of her university days. 'I auditioned for Three Sisters, but I didn't have a clue who they were. Instead, a friend and I would come up with the most debauched sketches to take to the Edinburgh Festival.'

In her two-year break between Durham and LAMDA she moved back in with her parents, teaching drama to disabled children at a local college. She talked the Arts Council into a £5,000 grant and won The Sunday Times Playwriting Award for Shaking Cecilia, a road comedy with pathos that she took to Brussels on tour. Haribo sponsored her next Edinburgh venture. 'It was writing and performing that gave me the confidence to audition for drama school. I thought you needed to be well versed in Shakespeare and I just wasn't.'

She is certainly well-versed in Brontë by now, having just finished shooting the melodrama in West Yorkshire. But now she's back in West Kensington sharing a flat with another actor while waiting for her next big role. She will surely not be resting for long.

Hair by Juan Carlos at One Makeup using Shu Uemura. Make-up by Julie Jacobs at One Make-up using By Terry exclusively at Space NK