In 1999 Keeley Hawes and Amanda Redman took on the role of Diana Dors in the ITV biopic The Blonde Bombshell. Keeley stared as the younger Diana Dors, while Amanda Redman took on the role of her later years.
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'I binged on chips, chocolate and beer to look like Diana Dors, but I loved my fuller figure'; She's better known for playing elegant toffs, but in a remarkable transformation Keeley Hawes has captured the feisty spirit and courage of British sex siren Diana Dors.
The drama is available to buy as part of 'Diana Dors: The Collection', but is also available to watch on Youtube.
The Mirror: Blonde Bombshell Interview (1999)
In a skin-tight dress that accentuates every curve, ruby red lipstick drawing her mouth into a full pout, her hair bleached a platinum blonde and curled into a 1950s-style bob, the resemblance to screen legend Diana Dors is uncanny.
Yet beneath the glossy make-up is an actress better known for playing sophisticated ladies than seductive vamps.
At first glance, Keeley Hawes seems a completely unsuitable choice to recreate the early glamorous years of screen siren Diana Dors. For starters, Diana was a diminutive 5ft 2in, famous for her womanly curves, sexy pout, platinum locks and obvious allure. Keeley, however, is a towering 5ft 10in, with straight dark hair, a boyishly slender figure, and has a more subtle sensuality.
Yet when Keeley, 23, stars as the late film star in The Blonde Bombshell - a two-part dramatisation of the fascinating and tragic life of the 1950s pin-up - she somehow captures her essence on screen.
Maybe it's because Keeley understands the struggle that Dors, born plain Diana Fluck in Swindon, went through to try and achieve acclaim as an actress. For despite her rich accent and gentle tones, Keeley herself is from a working-class Cockney background.
Today, wearing a simple cotton dress, Keeley recalls the first time she witnessed her amazing transformation into Diana Dors.
"When I looked in the mirror, I felt a shiver run down my spine. The similarity between us was spooky," she says.
Keeley's face was even made-up by the same woman who gave Diana her seductive image, but the dramatic hairstyle and hourglass figure were harder to achieve.
"I wore specially-made wigs," says Keeley, who plays Diana from the age of 16 to 33 (Amanda Redman plays the older Diana). "And I was told to dye just the middle section of my own hair the same colour.
"If I'd done that, though, I would have looked like a skunk, so I had my hair bleached all over. I have changed my hair colour several times for parts before.
"Putting on weight for the part was tricky, though. Although Diana was slim when she was young, she wasn't as slim as me. I find it hard to gain extra pounds because I have a fast metabolism. To put on a stone, I ate everything I could lay my hands on - chocolate, chips and beer.
"But I liked my fuller figure. The only uncomfortable part was wearing girdles to create the right hourglass shape. I'd prefer whale-bone corsets to those things any day.
"Diana had such a fantastic life and character, and I hope I've managed to capture both."
The series follows Diana Dors' life from a young starlet to her death from cancer in 1984. Dors made her screen debut aged 15 and was built up as Britain's answer to Marilyn Monroe, although she was always perceived as a more vulgar copy of the original. In 1956 she won acclaim for her portrayal of murderess Ruth Ellis in Yield To The Night, but threw away her early promise on a failed bid to take on Hollywood.
In her 52 years, Dors' lurid private life, her fight against cancer and her subsequent battle with the bulge were often in the news. Despite a brief revival of her acting career in the early 1970s, she played out her last days as a regular on chat and game shows - and even appeared in the Adam And The Ants pop video for Prince Charming.
Diana married three times, first to Dennis Hamilton (played by Rupert Graves), then to Dickie Dawson (Gary Webster). Her third husband, in whose arms she died and who committed suicide a few months later, was Alan Lake (Barnaby Kay).
It was Diana's role as a wife that Keeley found hardest to identify with.
"I would like to settle down," says Keeley who is single. "Everyone I know is either planning a wedding or are smug marrieds. They used to want to go out and have a laugh, now they're discussing marriage and what would be a good month for it.
"It's nice being on your own for a while but I'd like to have a relationship now. The problem is, men never chat me up. I wouldn't know how to chat up a bloke either. What do you say? `Hello, you look a bit nice'? I'd make a total idiot of myself."
Keeley's last long-term boyfriend was Kelly, a 31-year-old male model. They were together for four and a half years, and shared a house in South- East London, before breaking up in December 1997.
"Kelly was the first bloke who chatted me up," she says. "He was very good-looking and I felt totally insecure waking up next to him. He'd look at me and go, `Aagh!'"
She's joking, but there's no denying that she lacks confidence in her appearance.
"It was hard living up to his looks all the time," she says. "I used to wonder whether other people would think, `God, what's he doing with her?' He never played on anything like that, though.
"When we broke up, it was mainly my decision. Kelly's a homely lad who wanted babies. I didn't feel ready for that so it wasn't fair to stay with him, to stop somebody from doing what they wanted to do with their life.
"You have to be sensible about these things. We still care about each other and helped each other get over it, counselling one another on the phone. I'd call him and say, `I miss you. Have you got a girlfriend yet? No? Good!'
"After the split, it gave me time to re-evaluate my life. I wouldn't have wanted to go straight into another relationship."
Today, older and wiser, Keeley admits that she is beginning to feel broody.
"I can't wait to have kids," she says. "My older brothers, Jamie and Keith, and big sister Joanne have two children each. I love them to bits. It's great when we play and they jump all over me. When I become a mum, I hope to be like Joanne. She's totally devoted to her children, and has brought them up in the right way - with good standards, good morals and good behaviour."
Keeley's "posh" accent belies her working-class roots. The daughter of a Hackney cab driver, she was brought up in a three-bedroom council maisonette in central London. Her retired grandfather, uncle and both her brothers are also cabbies, b ut Keeley chose a more artistic career.
"I knew from an early age, after playing the Pied Piper in a school play, that I wanted to be an actress," she says. "When the Sylvia Young Theatre School moved opposite our house, I used to listen at the window to the students singing and wish I could join them."
Enrolled there by her mum Brenda, Keeley studied music, dance and drama from the age of nine to 16. She helped pay the fees by working in an antique shop on Saturdays and by appearing in TV commercials.
Her best friend came from an equally modest background and is now a world famous pop star - milkman's daughter Emma Bunton of The Spice Girls.
"We were inseparable," recalls Keeley. "We used to see each other every day. We're still in touch but too busy to meet up. It's a bit like being friends with a Beatle - everyone wants her autograph, not mine!"
Her other famous peers at Sylvia Young included Denise Van Outen, Samantha Janus, Dani Behr and two members of All Saints.
"It's incredible how well the girls have done," she says. "If I could get them all back into that classroom, I'd think, `Wow!'"
It was at the theatre school that Keeley lost her London accent.
"We were taught to speak properly," she recalls. "I'd come home and when my dad Tony asked what I'd learnt that day, I'd recite my elocution lesson - `Jane baked a cake, a tasty cake, a raisin cake'. He and my brothers would gawp and say, `What the 'ell are you on about?' Dad and I now have swearing matches for fun. He'll say something in Cockney rhyming slang and I'll try to respond in the same way.
"I adore his sense of humour. When he was ill, I phoned to ask if he was in bed, to which he replied, `In bed? Your mother's got me outside mowing the effing lawn!'"
Blessed with stunning green eyes and regular features, Keeley was out shopping in London's Oxford Street when she was spotted by a scout for Select Models agency. She began earning money as a catwalk model and was photographed for glossy women's magazines, but the glamour of being a model soon faded.
"Around the time Kate Moss started to make it big, everyone was emulating the skinny look," she says. "I wasn't like that and didn't want to be. I was surrounded by thin people eating rice cakes whose lives revolved around, `What does everyone think of the way I look?'. It isn't healthy at that age.
"Modelling is a superficial world. If you're thin enough they'll be your friend."
She gave up modelling to become a fashion assistant at Cosmopolitan magazine. It was here, sitting in a pile of shoes in the fashion cupboard, that she received the phone call that would change her life.
"Sylvia Young called to tell me that a casting director had seen a picture of me in an old copy of Spotlight," she recalls. "She wanted me to do a screen test for a part in Dennis Potter's last screenplay, Karaoke. I didn't even know who he was."
She hadn't heard of her famous co-star, Richard E Grant, either. Though she did get to know him rather intimately during their steamy stand-up sex scene.
"We had a great laugh," she says, "especially as Richard had to wear nothing but a cricket box, plus his shoes and socks. He was such a nice guy, though, and was always talking about his little girl."
Karaoke kickstarted Keeley's TV career. There followed parts in The Moonstone and The Beggar Bride, in which Keeley played Ange, a hard-up mother who cons her way into the life of a millionaire toff.
"I really identified with Ange," she says. "A bit like me, she came out of nothing and tried to make something of herself, but I hate money, it ruins lives. I'd rather have no money than lose my friends."
Family are also important to Keeley. Her 86-year-old grandmother Meg is one of her greatest fans, but she's not above telling Keeley if she disapproves of any scenes.
"They're the sexy ones," grins Keeley. "I did them in The Beggar Bride as well as Karaoke. When I asked nan what she thought of the series she said, `You know which bit I didn't like, but I liked all the rest'.
"In some ways, I agree with her. Eroticism is better when it's suggestive, not blatant. And naked bodies are less sexy than people in tantalising clothes who leave something to the imagination. I think kissing scenes are more erotic than full-frontal sex because you kiss at the sexiest stage of a relationship, when you've just met.
"I wouldn't do a scene I felt uncomfortable with, and I understand why my nan doesn't like the sex scenes. Well, you can't please everyone all the time, can you?"
If the demand for Keeley is anything to go by, she evidently does please most people most of the time.
Last year she played Lizzie Hexam, a working-class girl whose beauty gains her access to higher society in Our Mutual Friend. And in An Inspector Pitt Mystery, she played Victorian upper-class heroine Charlotte Ellison. She and her co-star Eoin McCarthy were invited to dinner by Prince Edward, the head of Ardent productions which made the mini-series.
"I asked him to marry me," she says, "but I was joking, of course. When I do get married, it won't be for position or money, I'd like a man who stimulates me intellectually."
Until then, she's concentrating on her career. Her first brush with the Hollywood A-list -Sean Connery, Ralph Fiennes, and Uma Thurman - came last year when she played a secretary in The Avengers film.
"I must admit, I was nervous about meeting them," she says. "The first time I met Sean I stuttered and said, `Hello', in a silly, high-pitched voice about 18 times. It's just as well I only had a small part."
In The Blonde Bombshell, however, Keeley's role as Diana Dors is big in more ways than one. "I was a stone heavier and was proud of it," she says. "I loved my new curvaceous look. In fact I would have liked to have stayed like that."
But it wasn't to be. For her next film, co-starring with Dame Maggie Smith in The Last September, she had to slim down to play a sylph-like teenager. Still, whatever her size, Keeley will always be a big success.
"Sometimes I feel guilty about being so lucky," she says. "I had no idea this would happen. If I hadn't done this, I would probably have ended up as a teacher.
"Or in some magazine fashion cupboard."
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