I am no prude but what, I ask, is a nice, discreet, private, shy, wary actress doing in this film where we see energetic alfresco lovemaking within the first few minutes? It is a far cry from the rural pleasantries of Peak Practice. I play mum and pour the tea - we are in a cosy Chelsea Harbour hotel - while she contemplates her answer.
In it she plays forensic pathologist Dr Sam Ryan, a Belfast born single woman of 37, living and working in Cambridge where her mother moved after her husband, who was in the RUC, was blown up in a booby-trapped car when Sam was 13.
She speaks softly, with an occasional Londonderry lilt – she was brought up there, the youngest of four daughters of a headmaster. Her sisters became nurses or teachers, and she seems to have a certain prim cautiousness within her, unusual for an actress, as well as a toughness behind the porcelain prettiness – a more normal attribute.
She explains, several times, how "private" she is – one of those cliched paradoxes often noticeable in those who disport themselves for a living. "Yes, it’s a huge contradiction," she admits. "I don’t know why I was drawn to acting, although from about six I loved dancing and would shut myself away for hours, making up ballets, performing on my own with a record player.
"I still find doing ‘takes’ incredibly intoxicating. There’s such a thrill when everyone is concentrating on a scene. It’s nothing to do with people looking at me - we’re so against vanity aren’t we? We’re not allowed to pat ourselves on the back these days. You have to turn round a few months later and ask in a small voice, 'Was that all right?'
There are those who say there are too many police or medical dramas on television, and Silent Witness combines both genres. "But it’s different because Sam is a pathologist, dealing with what happens after the event. Pathologists are doing a jigsaw puzzle, which is very different to treating a patient with high blood pressure in a country practice.
"I agree, though, there is a fair obsession with medical and police matters in this country. Perhaps they’re the things we most worry about politically and stories about life and death provide good drama. But we all have the power to turn off the television and different programmes appeal for various reasons – a favourite actor, good locations. I rarely watch television, but there are some wonderful programmes."
"Script writers can have you doing rather peculiar things when you’ve been playing a particular character for too long. It’s best to go when people still like you. But I had nothing to go to, which was a bit foolhardy. You could call it confidence, or wildness. I don’t think I’ve ever stood still for long."
"I had a year of staring out the window. The parts weren’t there and interviews didn’t happen. It was horrible, but in retrospect probably quite good for me. I pulled in my horns. For a while, just before Peak Practice, I thought of giving up acting. I hadn’t quite decided what to do, but I am very resourceful and could turn my hands to all sorts of things - cooking, making collages, baking bread in the south of France. It wouldn’t have worried me. I’m not rigid in the way I think of my life."
"I’ve always been fascinated with medicine, and there’s a danger in acting a doctor that you become worthy and start believing you’re a saviour, which is very condescending and presumptuous – a dangerous road to go down. I recognised my own personality had changed. Beth – I love her - was a very easy character to have clinging round me, and I didn’t realise it. I put a lot of things in my life into hers and vice versa.
"But I don’t take Sam Ryan home because she’s such a dark person. This probably sounds absolute nonsense, but when I’m dressing for the part I feel her around me, and it’s a very kind of theatrical experience. I take on the mantel of this character when I go into the dressing room and take her off at the end of the day. You’re going to think I’m insane." She laughs tactfully and I assure her that is not the case.
There is tension in the films between her and police superintendent Harriet Farmer, played by Clare Higgins, who is unimpressed by her persistent meddling in cases that have been ‘solved’. "It isn’t cosy, like being in the theatre with a nice green room and comfy sofas. We’re all rather different people, but we get on."
"When I you’re there from 6:30 in the morning until nine at night, you have to be fairly quiet if you’re going to pull off a good performance during the 15th take of a car scene at eight o’clock in the evening. I don’t like expending energy on endless conversations, so I’ve gone into myself a lot. Does that make me difficult? You’ll have to ask other people. I don’t think so, but I don’t suffer fools gladly and take no prisoners."
Next year she will be 40. "Why should I worry about that? We should be proud of our ages and pat ourselves on the back that we have got so far in such a stressful and frightening world. I’m afraid of the future, of where things will go. Big things. I don’t just mean on our little island, but the world as a whole. What is going to happen?"
"Not many have the main part in a series. Most roles are token – wife, girlfriend, mother, sister, daughter – a feed to the male peacock. I’d love to be a man for a while and see how different it is when you kick ass."
Silent Witness seasons 1-28 are available to stream now on BBC iPlayer.
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