Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker.

My guest today grew up in the north of England, blessed with a gift for performance

and a burning desire to leave her hometown behind.

So it was that Jane Horrocks won a place at London's renowned drama school, Radha,

and found herself hailed as a major new talent while

still in her 20s. Her breakthrough role was in the play, The Rise and Fall of Little Voice,

written specially for her by Jim Cartwright. Now, the role won Jane Horrocks Awards, and it was

made into a successful movie some six years later.

She's always combined theatre, film and television.

She became a much-loved character in the hit TV comedy, Absolutely Fabulous.

And she used her vocal skills to become the voice of a plasticine chicken, babs,

in the hugely popular animated chicken-run films. In an industry where actors,

particularly women, have long complained of sexism, ageism and exploitative attitudes,

has Jane Horrocks found her own pathway to empowerment. Well, she joins me now. Welcome to Hard Talk. Thank you very much.

Well, it's great to have you in this studio. Now, you've been in this acting business for almost

four decades. I just wonder when you think about your own career. Do you feel that you very

consciously shaped it, or is it more a question of serendipity and stuff that just happened?

I think there's a lot of both actually, yes. I think I did engineer quite a lot of it.

My choices were very specific. But yeah, certain things happened at a certain time that,

you know, formed it as well. And when you think about the big choices, the key choices that you made that were

instrumental in shaping your career, what would you point to?

I think probably the biggest choice that I made was leaving the RSC.

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