Making a big splash: Kierston Wareing

She may have wowed the critics at Cannes, but Kierston Wareing would still be running a tanning salon if not for a lucky break.

Her co-star Michael Fassbender says she looks like Brigitte Bardot. The directors Ken Loach and Andrea Arnold rave about her. But a couple of years ago Kierston Wareing was opening a tanning salon in Essex, because she thought she'd never make it in acting.

Thirty-one-year-old Wareing plays a neglectful, sexy single mother in the new British film Fish Tank, a gritty portrayal of life on an Essex council estate, close to where Wareing herself grew up in Leigh-on-Sea. The film won the Jury Prize in Cannes and is shortly to be released in the UK.

It is hard to imagine how, as the archetypal Essex girl who grew up in Leigh-on-Sea, Wareing took so easily to the red carpet at the Cannes International Film Festival.

According to Fassbender, "She's got this sultry, sexy rawness to her." It was that sex appeal that would have been confined to the tanning salon, until one night two years ago her life took a lucky turn. Ken Loach discovered her and cast her as the lead in It's a Free World, playing single mum Angie who turns into a ruthless recruitment worker, hiring Polish immigrants. It was a role that would garner a Bafta TV Award nomination. Previously, Wareing had been in The Bill and in music videos for P Diddy and Oasis but, afraid she was getting nowhere, she had opened a tanning and waxing salon in Southend-on-Sea. "I said to Ken when I went to the audition, 'Don't waste your time, I'm giving up acting. He said, 'Why?' I said, 'Because I'm finding it too hard." Loach persisted, however, and it's not something that Wareing is going to easily forget. "I really can't thank Ken enough for giving me my break," she says.

The actress is half perched on a sofa in London's Soho and has dyed her trademark peroxide hair a deep brown colour, which is disconcerting when you recall her film roles.

The gritty drama Fish Tank is set on a council estate in Essex. Her character is a scornful single mother, Joanne, whose relationship with boyfriend, Connor, played by Fassbender, is not as idyllic as first imagined. Matters become more complicated when her troubled teenage daughter Mia – played by the unknown Katie Jarvis – develops a crush on him.

Most of the film is taken up by the sizzling tension between Jarvis and Fassbender, but between all the shouting at her children, Wareing's character is left broken-hearted and puffy-faced from too much crying.

Fish Tank was written and directed by Andrea Arnold, whose debut feature, Red Road, won the Jury Prize at the 2006 Cannes Festival and whose short film Wasp won an Oscar in 2003. She shares a passion with Loach for filming realism and also for not giving the cast a script, preferring to let the story unfold to them, as in real life.

"When I started working on It's a Free World I said to Ken, 'Where's the script? Can you give us the script as soon as possible because I'd like to learn my lines,'" says Wareing. "But he said no, only revealing that I was Angie, a single mother who was setting up a small business."

It wasn't any less confusing for her in Fish Tank. "We didn't even know if the camera was rolling at times. Michael would ask me, 'Is it rolling?' I'd say, 'God knows what Andrea is doing'."

This summer Wareing stars in Sky1's new crime drama, The Take, based on Martina Cole's novel; she plays Jackie Jackson, the long-suffering wife of a handsome East End gangster, played by Tom Hardy. It was another chance for her to pucker up to play a tough but vulnerable woman with issues.

She finds herself racked by disappointment when she gives her husband a second chance following his release from prison, only to find his promises of becoming a changed man dissolve. She's also starred as Helen, a victim of domestic violence, in Leaving, a powerful short film directed by Richard Penfold, for which she won Best Actress at the Super Shorts Award 2009.

Wareing still lives in Leigh-on-Sea, where she has bought a house. She hasn't moved in yet, but has been staying with her mum, nearby, sleeping on the sofa. "Don't get me wrong," says Wareing. "I'm single and if I didn't come to London so much, I'd never live in Essex. There's not a lot going on there."

She remembers wanting to act from the age of seven, taking inspiration from child star Jodie Foster. She took a step closer to fulfilling her wish when she went to study at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in New York, between 1997 and 2000, before returning to the UK. She has led a troubled life, despite coming from a stable home.

"My problem was that I was bullied at school and then I became rebellious. I've had a lot of trouble with boyfriends – like domestic violence. The director of Leaving, Sam Hearn, had no idea of this when he cast me as Helen. He wanted me to go and hang out in women's shelters for research."

She shrugs her shoulders when asked what attracted both Loach and Arnold to cast her in their films. "I don't know," she says. "Andrea didn't even audition me. We just had a chat."

Arnold sums up Wareing's appeal as a feeling of familiarity. "I loved Kierston the minute I set eyes on her and felt I had known her all my life. I cast her in one second. It turned out she grew up in the area we filmed in so maybe that is what I tapped into. She felt very genuine, her accent, everything felt authentic."

The filming of Fish Tank took place over six weeks in the summer of 2008. "It was like being in one big happy family for six weeks. It wasn't like work. I'd play football with Michael or I'd sit in my trailer with the girls, talking about life. I brought my music along," says Wareing. "When we did work we'd be ready for a scene and Andrea would just say to me, 'Be more bitchy' or 'Don't be so bitchy'. Other than that I didn't really know what was going on. Obviously, you start to piece it together as you go along, but the twists and turns are exciting, like real life, and your character grows."


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