Photograph: Robert Perry
AFTER spells in cities which like to think o
f themselves as "vibrant", Laura Fraser laughs as she describes an innocent-sounding day's filming back in the place where it all began for her – and how she almost ended up in a fight. "We were making this short film, first in the house with 20 of our friends working for free, and then down by the Clyde," she says. "It was based on a Dorothy Parker story and there wasn't jogging in her day – at least not in Nikes – so we politely asked these guys if they would mind stopping for a few seconds. But they turned nasty and pushed my husband up against a wall and screamed: "We're on PBs! We're on PBs!' Who says Glasgow's got a health issue when runners are so devoted to personal bests that they'll beat you up over them? That's what I call vibrant!"
Fraser's hubby Karl Geary is an actor-writer and that was his first, almost disastrous, attempt to get behind the cameras. He's now virtually a slash-Glaswegian as well, having initially been reluctant to move to the city. "I won him round and then Glasgow won him round," says 32-year-old Fraser. "He likes that the people here have pride in where they're from."
Fraser is a native. London was vibrant but then she fell out of love with it. New York was vibrant but then she fancied the country life in Ireland. But then she got pregnant and worried the pram would get stuck in the cow-pats. "So now I wheel my buggy about this fair city and these gentlemen of leisure point and shout: 'It's green! It's green!'"
You can only please half of Glasgow with trendy baby accessories that shade but Fraser is pleasing herself by basing herself on home turf to juggle the roles of wife, mother and actress.
She laughs when I remind her of the last time we met. "I was on these bloody nicotine pills, wasn't I? Still am." Four years ago Fraser was in the process of quitting smoking after previously giving up the booze and drugs. How her life has changed. "Now I worry about the state of the pavements – they're simply terrible for buggies!"
We've met in the city's Malmaison Hotel – over a mineral water – to discuss her two new BBC dramas. One is heroically small-scale, attempting to recreate the Crimean War with not many more extras than Fraser could muster among her pals – that's Florence Nightingale and she's in the title role. It's a piece which leans heavily on its star, her acting and her brown-eyed beauty. The other drama is the greatest story ever told – The Passion. "I play the wife of Ciaphas, the High Priest of Judea, who gives the order to kill Jesus." She gets a bit more help in this one, for although not quite a Cecil B DeMille job, there was some money for horses.
Fraser says she's never been happier and it shows in the smile which lights up the hotel bar in the afternoon gloom. "Ireland was beautiful – if you don't count the non-existent roof, the dirt floor, the outside loo, the sheep in the kitchen and spiders everywhere. We were doing up this old farmhouse in West Cork but we ran out of money. I imagined myself painting but the oils stayed in their box.
"We were very remote and could get cut off by storms. It was a half-hour drive for a pint of milk. When I had an audition in London I had to get up at five and wouldn't be back until two the next morning. And when Karl was away I'd get so lonely that I was practically kidnapping the postman: 'No, no, how's it going with you?' So when I got pregnant I thought: 'Great, the nightmare's over!'"
Glasgow has made her happy, though while it was the city which gave her her big break – as a Clydeside mobster's moll in Small Faces – she thought at one stage that she would never return. "When I was 18, I couldn't wait to move away. I was like: 'If I ever have to come back here I'll kill myself.' Glasgow seemed like failure and death to me back then, but not any more."
And motherhood – Lila Rose will be two in May – has certainly made her happy. "I expected it to be overwhelming and all-encompassing but having a kid brings you into the world in a whole different way. You care about other people more than you did before when… well, you know."
More than she did as a self-obsessed actress? Fraser was probably one of them. Her wild days and wilder nights have been well-documented. She'd turn up late for jobs, earning herself a bad name.
After the dizzying thrills of shooting six films in six years, of snogging Leonardo DiCaprio and Helen Baxendale in the name of art, of sharing a flat with Anna Friel as part of the film world's version of Britpop, she eventually ended up in a soggy mess of paranoia and loathing.
"Do you know," she says, "I almost gave up acting. When I was at Lila's playgroup and one of the mums told me her husband thought he'd seen me in A Knight's Tale I'd almost stopped thinking of myself as that person. I was seriously considering not acting ever again because I was really enjoying the relief of not having to try and push myself and deal with my ambition.
"But guess what? For about six months it was great to be not acting, but after I gave up breast-feeding I realised that I loved it. I'm naturally a shy person so I love the camaraderie of the set. I love the fact the work's always different. And I love the vicariousness of acting."
Florence Nightingale reminds us of how good an actress Fraser is. If she really is shy, then this is a terrific portrayal of the pioneer of modern nursing and a woman who was passionate, fiery, dogmatic and politically minded at a time when the fairer sex was only supposed to be interested in "the linen, the china and the 56 pots of jam". But you guess that Fraser does have some of these characteristics herself.
In addition to the small-screen dramas, she has just finished a film called Cuckoo. "It's a thriller and I play a medical research student who's paranoid, insular, controlling, keeps hearing strange noises and has a boss played by Richard E Grant, who's obsessed with her – a fun role."
These days Fraser can play at being paranoid and enjoy it. She's glad to have rediscovered her zest for acting but now her career has to be arranged round her life, rather than the other way round.
"Lila comes first and rather than work to keep working, I'm only doing the jobs that really interest me," says Fraser. "And if I get that dream role which takes me away from Glasgow for months then the producers will have to rent me a three-bedroom house so Lila and the nanny can come along too. So really nothing's changed. I've just become even more of a demanding actress!"
So would she like her daughter to follow in her footsteps? "Well, her current party-piece is parading round naked in my high heels so she's well on the way. I don't know… at the moment I just want her to grow up happy and safe. She's already quite headstrong so I'm thinking I won't forbid her to do anything because that'll only make her determined to do these things. I don't regret any of the things I did – what's the point? She's going to make mistakes and have flaws and get into scrapes. All I can really do is teach her right from wrong and love her loads."
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The Passion starts on BBC1 tonight at 8pm. Florence Nightingale will be screened on the BBC at a later date