Well, I live in the UK in 2017 and I’m like every woman in this country who flips through supplements and magazines – I’m bombarded with pictures of so-called perfection,” she says. “Sometimes I feel very bullish about it – this is the age that I am, this is the way that I look, there’s nothing I can do about it and I’m grateful that I’ve lived this long. In terms of her career, she’s not sure she would have wanted to be a great beauty anyway. “I think for some people it can really get in the way of what they do. The way you look, the way you sound, is always something that you have to circumnavigate.” And Johnny is a predator, an abuser whose evident anguish and self-hate does not entitle him to a moment of our pity. He is at the centre of a fiercely pessimistic story that is not leavened, as many of Leigh’s films are, with redeeming features. This is a movie of virtuoso nihilism and scorn. Irina is obsessed with the idea that she looks younger than she does. Has the 57-year-old Sharp ever felt a similar anxiety about getting older as an actress? More recently, she starred in a detective drama, ITV’s Scott & Bailey, created by the writer of Last Tango in Halifax and Happy Valley, Sally Wainwright. Sharp played one half of a cop duo with Suranne Jones – who is now making waves in BBC One’s Doctor Foster – and it ran for five seasons. What made it such a success?

Sharp herself is intensely private. She is married to Nicholas Gleaves, a fellow actor nine years her junior, who is also appearing in The Seagull. But when I ask about their children, Sharp says in a tone of suppressed fury: “There is nothing I want to tell you.” With Wainwright, Abi Morgan, Sharon Horgan, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and others all making their mark on the small screen, is Britain living through a golden age for female writers? “I don’t know if it’s a golden age. I think the fact that it’s flagged up means that there’s still a way to go – women are 50 per cent of the population so really it should be inconsequential whether it’s a man or a woman [writing], but I’m very grateful that those women write such amazing stuff. They are great writers.” Her job, she says, is “all about me”, while the people in her life are “nothing to do with the business”.There is certainly hope for this bright future that Sharp demands, but in an era where routes into the profession for working-class actors are narrowing, and a modelling career can often trump years at drama school, it almost seems like she is one of the last of her kind: born to act, brilliant, and as at home on stage as on screen. Not ordinary at all. verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{