Golden Goose
Cathy Levy talks to Chiswick-based actress Claire Goose
Above: © Five
Lately things have been rather hectic for Claire Goose – the actress best known for her roles in Casualty and Waking the Dead. After leaving the long-running series behind her, she jumped straight into three strong TV dramas, a play, a low budget Brit flick and completed a three-part drama for channel Five. Oh, and she’s also planning a wedding to her scriptwriter boyfriend, Craig Woodrow. So, just a few things on the go then.
“It is a bit manic really,” she says, taking a moment out, at home in Chiswick. “We just got back from Norfolk where my parents live. Craig and I got engaged recently, so it’s all a mad hunt for wedding venues.”
In fact, it was just after filming the last in the trilogy of Perfect Day, the hugely popular drama series recently shown on channel Five, that Claire’s partner whisked her off to a romantic getaway at Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons, and proposed. Her screen husband in Perfect Day, Tom Goodman-Hill, himself got married directly after filming. “It’s a good omen, the programme, good things come out of it,” laughs Claire.
For those who didn’t manage to catch the series, it followed the lives of six friends as they prepared for the wedding of Amy (played by Claire) to her fiancé Tom (Goodman-Hill) – an interesting case of life imitating art (hopefully without the dramas). It was originally intended to be a one-off, shown in December 2005, but proved so popular, they also decided to film a prequel and sequel and show them altogether.
In the past, Claire has been romantically linked with her co-stars, like Jonathan Kerrigan who she acted alongside in Casualty. The pair’s relationship blossomed and they ended up living together. This time, it was a blind date that brought Claire and her now fiancé together. Readers of The Green will be delighted to learn the big date happened in Chiswick’s very own Starbucks, where the couple were so engrossed in each other’s company, they stayed there for seven hours.
“Yes, it’s true. In Chiswick we have our own Starbucks...I think we were both pretty hyper by the end of the night from all the caffeine. Craig had to leave at about 6pm to go to a party in town and said he literally danced all night because he had so much energy from caffeine. It was delightfully unexpected.”
The wedding is planned for later on in the year, with Rebecca Lacey, another Casualty colleague, as Matron of Honour – “so she’ll definitely have to be there, I don’t care what job she’s doing.” Fortunately, the workflow has slowed for a while to give Claire a chance to get organised. She says it’s very much all or nothing with acting jobs – either one after another or nothing at all. But, she continues, it was a very specific choice to leave the security of Waking the Dead, in which she won critical acclaim as DS Mel Silver, alongside great Brit actors Trevor Eve and Sue Johnston. “I realised it would mean I’d work less, but you get more diversity. There are so many plus-sides to being in a long-running series. You end up becoming a family unit, you get involved in each other’s lives and you have that security and continuity, but I get to a point where I feel twitchy and that I’m becoming complacent and I never want to feel that way,” she explains.
Looking at her latest work, it was clearly a good move. In 2005, Claire could be seen with David Tennant and Kate Ashfield in the gripping ITV1 two-part drama Secret Smile. Tennant played a rather terrifying psychopath, to which Claire laughs: “He was very scary! But when you meet David, he’s so not like that. He’s constantly laughing and smiling and joking, and then when he turns it on, you think: ‘God you are actually quite creepy!’ Kate and I used to get really jittery and say: ‘Ooh don’t do that, it’s really horrible.”
After that, came another drama, Love Lies Bleeding, this time with Martin Kemp and Hugo Speer. “Again, it was a very different job for me. They were lovely people to work with and Hugo’s a bit of a giggler too.”
This year Claire will take another direction again, this time on the bigger screen. Playing an undercover cop whose daughter is killed and so sparking off a revenge battle, the movie is a Brit affair called Bad Day and directed by Ian David Diaz. “It was great fun to do, exhausting, long hours, but fun and really different for me again. My character goes off on a bit of a killing spree, which I wouldn’t normally get to do in TV.
There was a lot of running around London with guns, shooting people, covered in blood and getting beaten up or beating other people up – so, a break from the norm!”
Life at home is thankfully a little less dramatic. “I love running, I’m a bit of a nut for it, so I’ll run down to Kew Bridge, along the river, up to Chiswick Bridge, over the bridge and back round again. I love the fact there are really leafy parts to Chiswick.”
In terms of where you’ll spot her locally, she says: “Obviously there’s Starbucks! And there are some really lovely places to eat on the high street. I love Devonshire Road, too, and the gorgeous shops there. I love La Trompette, it’s very special. I also love Turnham Green Terrace. I did the FishWorks cookery course there, which was great fun.
Craig and I are big foodies, so we love going to the butchers there and getting local produce. There’s a farmers’ market just opened at a primary school in Chiswick so you might find us there on a Saturday – we are always wandering around Chiswick.”
Safe to say, if it’s not wandering through Chiswick’s leafy streets that you see Claire Goose, then you’ll certainly see more of her in a heap of prime-time dramas.