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The
Observer, Sunday 3 August 1997.
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No-one likes her. She doesn't care.
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Natasha
Little plays Rachel, the woman in the office who, for various reasons, some
of them mysterious, Milly hates. But what has Rachel done? Milly hates Rachel
so much that she whines to her therapist about it. It's a captivating situation,
fuelling the viewer's budding indignation about Milly's mental state. That's
if you're on Rachel's side. Some people are on Milly's side.
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Little,
who plays the part with just the correct amount of ambiguity, is slight
and has a dry wit. She is critical of herself on screen; the screen, she
says, can seem to do funny things to your looks. In fact, Rachel looks good
- cool, blonde and well turned out - which is part of the reason Milly hates
her. Of Rachel, Little says: 'I don't think she's a dreadful person. I think
she's insensitive in that she doesn't pick up on someone's dislike for her.
Instead of backing off, she ploughs on.'
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When
she began in the part, Little was told Rachel was 'manipulative' although
'I didn't know why.' Rachel, says Little, 'is just one of those people.
I've met them. You just don't like them. There's something about them.'
Until recently, since she graduated from the Guildhall School of Drama,
Little, 27, has been in the classical actor's limbo, wondering where her
next job would come from. But now, like several members of the cast of This
Life, she is in with the chance of becoming a star. She is poised. There's
been a lot of interest since she started to appear as Rachel. 'The characters
in the show aren't simple and logical,' says Little. 'They're complicated
and illogical, which people are.'
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You
might have seen Little as Jenny, the student, in the last series of London's
Burning. In the course of her studies, Jenny interviewed one of the firefighters,
John Hallam (she was writing a thesis on stress) and then had an affair
with him. Jenny, like Rachel, was an insensitive, possibly devious blonde.
Little is currently filming Granada's Far From The Madding Crowd (she's
Fanny, who gets pregnant and ends up in a workhouse). Soon you'll be able
to see her, along with Daniela Nardini, in a four part adaptation of a Fay
Weldon story, Big Women. I play a magazine editor who's a magazine-editor
type,' she says.
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She
grew up all over the place - her father worked in the Middle East. In this
country, she lived in Coventry and Essex; now she lives in east London with
a cat called Sylvia. She smokes menthol cigarettes, and plans to give up
in about three years. She is a connoisseur of diet colas - 'I can tell the
difference between the brands'. As a teenager, she attended drama workshops
at the weekends. Would she mind changing herself - say dyeing her hair -
for a part? She says, 'Yes! I'd chop my head off if it was the right part.'
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