They made your hands clammy, your knees quiver, and sent your hormones spinning when you were a dyke-in-training. It’s time to pay homage at the altar of dyke icons. From a stroppy lesbian daughter, to a lap dancer, to a bus driver, to a detective, this week it’s the chameleon character actress who likes to keep things interesting.

Name:
Sarah Smart.

Also known as:
Moody gay daughter Virginia in At Home With the Braithwaites.

Not to be confused with:
A lesbian in real life, it seems. “When you’ve been seen snogging another woman on television, people tend to assume that you must be gay in real life, too”, she says. “When I’m out and about, I’m often with my boyfriend and the question amuses him quite a lot. He likes to answer it for me”. Guess that clears things up, then.

Last seen:
Reprising her role as Swedish detective Anne-Britt Hoglund in Wallander.

Best feature:
Porcelain skin – she’s a right English rose.

Candy Bar or Kenric?
Neither – she’s too busy working on her next TV role.

Most likely to:
Give you a lap dance on demand. Like her demure character Lola in Funland, she had to learn the moves fast. “The lap dancing scenes were quite scary as I had to do them in front of all the other cast and crew, but it was fine in the end”, she says. “I did a couple of lessons and the girls who taught me were fantastic”.

Least likely to:
Hmm, there’s actually not a lot she won’t do – onscreen at least. After her turn as Lola, she said she felt “invincible” and that she could do “anything”. We can’t wait to see what she does next!

Is she a sista?
As we’ve already established, no.

Phwoarrr rating?
In At Home With the Braithwaites, we would have taken her over her sissy, girly onscreen sister Sarah Braithwaite any day.

Do mention:
Doctor Who - it’s a fantasy of hers to be in the show. “Even if I had to dress up as an alien”, she says. Now that we’d love to see.

Don’t mention:
The dark period during her mid-20s when the acting work dried up. “I spent a lot of time crying and waiting for the phone to ring”, she recalls. But this one’s a trooper and stuck with it – and now the roles seem to be coming thick and fast. “I want to do interesting work and earn good money”, she adds. It looks like she’s getting her wish.


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