Martine just wants to entertain

By Hannah Stephenson

Published:

MARTINE McCutcheon arrives all smiles, her raven hair swept back in an elegant ballerina bun, and quickly discards her luxurious fur coat.

Here to promote her debut novel, The Mistress, which has already attracted criticism after the first chapter was posted online before publication, she is instantly charming and surprisingly candid considering some of the negative publicity.

“Everybody deserves a chance to do something they’ve never done before, and nobody should flatten your dreams,” says the 33-year-old, simply.

“I don’t want to write something that’s going to win any prizes. I just want to entertain.”

Unlike many other “celebrity” novels, Martine’s story, which centres on a contemporary mistress, is not ghostwritten, she insists. Perhaps she has picked up some of the talents of her mother, Jenny Tomlin, who has written several bestselling misery memoir novels.

It is more than 10 years since Martine left EastEnders and the role of Tiffany Mitchell to find fame in a National Theatre production of My Fair Lady, produce a number-one hit single, Perfect Moment, and play Hugh Grant’s squeeze in Richard Curtis’s movie, Love, Actually.

But her quick rise to fame came at a personal price, she says. Now she realises the importance of having the right people around to protect and advise her.

“If you don’t have the right people getting you those opportunities and then protecting you, then you can become over-exposed and have to talk emotionally about things you are not equipped to answer.”

Once the darling of the press, stories of diva-like behaviour during My Fair Lady followed her to Hollywood, and the nation’s sweetheart developed a reputation for being difficult.

There’s a much-repeated tale, which she denies, that she screamed at a studio executive to “get off my bleedin’ dress”, Eliza Doolittle-style, at an Oscars party.

“As if I would,” she says, frustrated.

“Why would I do that to myself?”

Martine is still clearly perplexed by the negative publicity.

“Everybody had always been so pro me,” she says.

“I felt really supported when I went out there. I won the MTV movie award for best transatlantic breakthrough (for Love, Actually). I met people like Paul Bettany and Kate Beckinsale and I was sat there with Quentin Tarantino and Uma Thurman and Tom Cruise, and I couldn’t believe I was actually in Hollywood.”

After winning a role in an American pilot TV show, Martine sold her London flat, but then suddenly the whole deal was delayed.

“I couldn’t actually work because I was contracted to the Hollywood studio and they had me on hold.”

After a year, she returned home, on a low, and has had trouble finding the right role ever since.

There was the ITV1 soap, Echo Beach, last year, which bombed, and a smattering of other dramas and a film offer which she can’t discuss.

On the upside, she is soon to be promoting a new “Indulgence” range for Matalan and is currently in discussions about turning The Mistress into a TV series.

Today, she says she’s in a much happier place.

“I’m not insecure any more,” she reflects.

“People can think I was as difficult as they like, but I will never become a victim like I was then.”

The Mistress, by Martine McCutcheon, is published by Pan, priced £7.99.