Rising star Sara won't strip for TV

Apr 27 2008 by Gavin Allen, Wales On Sunday

NEW Welsh star Sara Lloyd Gregory’s sexy TV roles may get audiences hot under the collar, but she’ll never strip off for the cameras – because her mum won’t let her!

The 21-year-old Ammanford actress says her mum checks all her scripts for swearing and nudity before she goes for a part.

Sara will soon be hitting our screens after being cast by Cardiff-born screenwriter Andrew Davies in two steamy dramas that are sure to get the public’s pulse racing – but says both have got the seal of approval from mum Yvonne.

The actress is set to make a breakthrough in 2008 after being snapped up for the BBC’s next big costume drama Tess of the D’Urbervilles – which will also feature Gavin & Stacey’s Ruth Jones – as well as being cast opposite former EastEnders’ star Jack Ryder in Romeo and Juliet.

But it’s her work with Davies, best known for his bodice-ripping adaptation of literary lesbian love story Tipping The Velvet, which will make the headlines.

She has already filmed Affinity, a sexy supernatural Victorian period drama by Pembrokeshire-born Tipping the Velvet author Sarah Waters, while Sleep With Me, a modern-day drama, will finish filming next month.

Sara, who’s currently single, admits she had to get “sexual” for both.

“Sleep With Me is basically about a group of older people but there are a lot of flashbacks to when they were younger,” said Sara, who is so youthful-looking that she regularly plays characters much younger than her age.

“I play a 14- year-old version of a character called Lelia who goes on a French exchange programme and meets two French girls and a French boy.

“Lelia wants to be in their gang and initially they resist but then they take her upstairs and it gets quite sexual.

“Affinity is more of the same, but in bigger costumes.”

But just because she’s in some steamy lesbian scenes on screen, it doesn’t mean that modest Sara will be baring all.

“I would never strip off for a TV role,” said Sara.

“I had try to water it down for my mother when I got the script for Sleep With Me, but there’s no disguising another lesbian scene after Affinity.

“But I don’t think nudity is necessary on TV where things can be tastefully done with a lot of different camera angles.

“It’s my body and I don’t want anyone else to see it.”

But there’s no chance that the steamy scenes will take the focus away from her acting talent though, as in September she will play Juliet to Jack Ryder’s Romeo in Michael Bogdanov’s upcoming theatre tour.

It will be Ryder’s first big acting job since his recent split from his Coronation Street star wife, Kym.

“It’s quite exciting because I didn’t know who my Romeo was going to be for a couple of weeks but then Michael (Bogdanov) called me and told me it was Jack – it’s nuts.

“I’ve not met him yet because rehearsals don’t start until August, but obviously I’ve seen his photos in all the magazines.”

Ryder shot to fame as Jamie Mitchell in EastEnders and Sara admits one of the reasons she watched the soap as a teenager was because she fancied him.

“Yes!” she blushes.

“He’s a good looking boy.”

“I was only 15 or 16 at the time and obviously it’s a bit different now I’m older but and I’m sure it’s all going to be very professional between us.”