Are you looking at the first Jane Bond?
It would be a challenge for anyone to meet Vicky McClure and not enjoy the Nottingham-born actress's company. The Line of Duty and This Is England star laughs easily, pokes fun at herself and doesn't take anything too seriously - including the recommendation from fans that she should replace Daniel Craig as the next James Bond.
It's a novel suggestion, a female Bond, but one that McClure makes entirely conceivable. Rumours that she could be the incoming 007 have swirled since the season finale of Line of Duty last year - BBC Two's second most watched hour of television in 2016, thanks in no small part to her role as undercover Det Con Kate Fleming. Its fourth series airs this spring; the programme is the channel's most successful show for the past 15 years, when its ratings began.
When the show returns, the police drama's ranks will swell by one substantial A-lister as Thandie Newton joins in the role of DCI Roz Huntley. But, quickly, back to Bond.
"I am happy to talk about that," says McClure, sipping tea in a London hotel, flashing a wry smile to her agent who is sitting two banquettes away. "Yes, let's do it," she jokes. "I found the whole Bond thing very funny. I can't see it happening. We can hope, but I can't see it. I think that [suggestion] was just because people saw me on the side of a lorry [for Line of Duty]. I did all my own stunts."
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When it comes to hardy roles, McClure has a healthy back catalogue. As the peroxide blonde, Mr Whippy-haired character Lol in This Is England, director Shane Meadows's highly acclaimed film and subsequent three television miniseries, her razor-sharp improvisation and tough storylines earned her the Best Actress TV Bafta in 2011, and a reputation for excelling in unflinching roles. Since then, she has played a ruthless journalist in Broadchurch and Winnie Verloc, the wife of an English spy, in her first period drama, The Secret Agent, based on the novel by Joseph Conrad.
More recently, however, McClure has noticed a shift in gear in the scripts arriving on her doorstep.
"I am getting to that age when [the parts I am offered are for a] 'mother-of-three'. I am like, wow, that is not our only purpose. There are other roles."
In a profession where, creatively, the sky should be the limit, that must grate.
"It is not even annoying, it is just reality," she replies without self-pity. "You get to that point where actually all of my characters will potentially have children or be at that stage in their lives. I am living proof that doesn't have to be the case. I am not doing that, which is completely fine."
The 33-year-old McClure might not be doing the school run just yet, but she is thinking about it. Born and bred in Wollaton, west Nottingham, she now lives in the city with her partner of five years, the actor and director Jonny Owen, 45. They are yet to get married, but children are a possibility.
"It is on the horizon, but it is not here yet. Whenever it comes, it comes - if it comes, you know? When I was younger, I thought by the time I was 23 I would be married and maybe have two kids and a house. You are so naive as a kid. I thought I'd be in a completely different place, but I am totally content with where we are. We own a house together which is a bigger commitment than marriage; it is much harder to get out of."
The other reason that children are on the agenda today is down to McClure's latest project, The Replacement, which begins later this month. The BBC One psychological thriller is a chilling tale of what can go wrong when an expectant mother takes maternity leave - it is, quite frankly, enough to put any right-minded working woman off conceiving. McClure plays Paula, an insidiously manipulative architect who returns to the office to cover pregnancy leave for Ellen (played brilliantly by Morven Christie). It is the stuff of nightmares: the darker side of motherhood, postnatal depression, guilt, passive aggressive power struggles and hormonal paranoia.
With a powerful, almost all-female cast, it is also a demonstrable display of talent. For someone who has tackled plots including domestic abuse and rape, does McClure see herself as a poster girl for women's issues? She blanches a little at the thought.
"I am not constantly looking for that feminist role. It is important to put females at the front, [but] they don't have to be strong females all the time. There has to be a purpose and a reason."
If and when it comes to her own pregnancy, McClure says she would "definitely take a chunk of time off. I'd need to concentrate on my child and I'd want to." Being in the acting profession does, she concedes, give her greater flexibility on this score, but she thinks it's unfair to judge those who don't take the time off - "everyone has to do what is right for them."
It's a sensible answer, a salt-of-the-earth sort. Raised by her parents Mick, a joiner and former butcher, and Carol, an office worker, McClure knew she wanted to dance from the age of three until a failed medical for the Royal Ballet revealed she had weak ankles. At 11 she began attending Nottingham's Television Workshop, which counts Samantha Morton and Christopher Eccleston among its alumni, and it was there that a 15-year-old McClure met Meadows, who cast her - and a group of actors who would go on to be longtime castmates - in the 1999 film A Room for Romeo Brass and, seven years later, This Is England, as a tentative 23-year-old.
Next week McClure will tread the boards for the first time as an adult in Touched, a Second World War drama set during the 100 days between VE and V-J Day. The play depicts the lives of working-class Nottingham women and is being staged at the Nottingham Playhouse. McClure plays the lead, Sandra, who is toiling against the grief of losing a son and having a husband away at war.
"It is a real Nottingham play. It requires a Nottingham cast. The authenticity of all that needs to be there??? Hopefully I won't freak out," she says.
McClure may have lived in the city almost all her life and even has a tram named after her, but she wasn't always a diehard fan of her hometown. After years of auditions, it has taken a while to become proud of her East Midlands roots. But that decision has proved transformative.
"That was one thing I struggled with at the beginning of my career. I was trying to be someone else. I probably made myself sound less Notts and was trying to put on a bit of a nice accent. I didn't know where I fitted in. I thought you had to be like everyone else, but that is definitely not the way."
In a world of public school-educated Eddie Redmaynes and Benedict Cumberbatches, McClure stands all the taller for it.
The Telegraph, London