Tamzin Outhwaite enjoyed facing up to a dual role which cast her as Frances Tuesday, a women needing a new identity after giving evidence against a crooked lover. Steve Pratt reports.

FORMER EastEnders and Red Cap actress Tamzin Outhwaite shows a very different face in her first ITV project Frances Tuesday. She starts out in the two-part action thriller looking her usual glamorous blonde self. But once her character, a high profile accountant, is forced to go on the run after turning Queen's evidence against her crooked boyfriend, she adopts a very different look as plastic surgery turns her into a new woman.

Outhwaite loved the script because she gets to play two different women. She found it a shocking but liberating experience on seeing her new look.

"I was a bit shocked at first when I looked in the mirror. I thought I looked a bit of a freak, like someone who has had too much plastic surgery," she recalls.

"Frances doesn't want to look better, she just wants to blend in. She loses her identity and the good looks she's traded on to become anonymous.

"It was very strange but it was good. I enjoyed the whole disguise and the process of the transformation I found fascinating. The best thing was that I wasn't recognised. It was the same freedom as leaving the country and going to one where you're not known - you don't get pointed at or nudged."

She went shopping as Frances 2 and felt people were curious, looking at her and perhaps wondering if she was wearing a wig. "But on the whole I got less attention and that was the whole idea of the process," she says.

Her character Frances is forced to change her identity after giving evidence that puts her crooked fianc Lucas Pilgrim (Douglas Henshall) behind bars. She swaps her rich and glamorous lifestyle for a police protection programme as Frances "dies" and is given a new identity.

"I spoke to women living in refuges about their decisions to get away. Although Frances is not a battered wife, she is living in fear and wants to start again," says Outhwaite.

"The women I met had that dilemma about staying or going for real. They have been through so much more than I have ever done"

Frances' death is staged in a car crash as the vehicle goes over the edge of a cliff and blows up. She then has extensive plastic surgery, emerging with a new nose and cheekbones, different coloured eyes, false teeth and dark hair. For the actress, this meant a 90-minute session in the make-up chair.

"It's a dramatic transformation," she says. "The new teeth were especially strange. They let me have them at home before we started so I could get used to them and talk without lisping too much.

"It was also weird being in the hospital all day, laying on the bed. They marked up my face and I kept thinking, 'Why would anyone want to do this?'. I'm not against plastic surgery and I think it has helped people who have suffered through accidents rebuild their lives. I'm just glad it's not something I have to think about at the moment." As part of her new identity, Frances has to give up her daughter Sarah because she fears for the child's life if Lucas catches up with her.

"The babies and the children who were used in the film were adorable. At some stage it would be good to have children but it's not a burning ambition and right now would obviously not be right," she says.

Outhwaite's career has bloomed since she quit as Melanie Healy in EastEnders with roles in dramas including Red Cap, Final Demand, Hustle, When I'm 64 and the multi award-winning Out of Control. She also appears with Jason Flemyng in the forthcoming film Backwaters.

Now Hollywood has come calling. Since filming Frances Tuesday, she's been working with American actor Wesley Snipes in the movie Seven Seconds. "It's shot in Romania and I play a military policewoman again. Wesley is cool and so professional. He's great at all the action sequences. I was in awe of him when I first met him, but you have to hold your own and stand your ground.."

She doesn't think of it as the beginning of a Hollywood career, but as just another job. " I'm enjoying every minute of every day and never take anything for granted," she says.

* Frances Tuesday is on ITV1 on Monday and Tuesday at 9pm.

Published: 30/09/2004