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Born in Ammanford, south Wales, in 1987, Alexandra Roach began her career in the S4C soap Pobol y Cwm, before training at Rada in London. Her first major role was as a young Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady in 2011, and she has gone on to star in TV dramas including Utopia, No Offence, Hunderby and Being Human; she is currently staring in Amazon Prime Video’s series Lazarus. She lives in Bristol with her husband and daughter.
This is me in my living room. I’m 12 years old and proudly holding a letter I’d written to the local town council. In it, I pleaded with them to do something radical for the sake of the youth of Ammanford: open a Claire’s Accessories.
At this age, I was trying to figure out who I was. I was searching for a way to express myself, and I thought if I could just get my hands on a diamante headband and a glittery hair clip then it would give me some kind of identity. The letter, which was published in the South Wales Guardian, ends: “Please read my letter because this is what we need, not five bakeries and three shoe shops.”
I often wonder what happened to this studious, righteous “campaigner” version of myself – or if she’s still buried in me, waiting. Claire’s never came, of course. But I love that the article ends with a quote from a spokesperson from the company thanking me for my enthusiasm, and pointing out that there is a branch just 15 miles away in Swansea.
Soon after this was taken, I started going to a drama club in town on Saturdays. They happened to be casting for the Welsh soap opera Pobol y Cwm. Incredibly, I landed the role of Elin, who got up to loads of shenanigans. She was the naughty vicar’s daughter, the rebel child. She got caught smoking and stealing credit cards, and I think there was a teen pregnancy situation at one point. It was on Pobol y Cwm that I also did my first on-screen snog. It was outside the chip shop and I was so nervous – I had only just started having my actual first kisses, so I was no expert and there were certainly no intimacy coordinators back then.
Being a teenager in a small town was sometimes quite stifling. There was one nightclub, and the single time I snuck in underage, 11 different people told my dad. Dad worked for the Welsh Rugby Union as a development coach, so I suspect it was 11 budding rugby players who probably grassed me up. When I didn’t have a storyline in Pobol y Cwm, I worked in the jewellery shop Bojangles, the closest thing to Claire’s Ammanford ever got. I also had a job in Tesco. I remember serving someone at the till and them asking: “Wait, aren’t you on telly?”
Most of my school teachers were supportive, but there was one who laughed when I told her I wanted to go to Rada. Instead of being defeated, my instinct was: “I’ll show you.” What I hadn’t anticipated was how homesick I’d feel. When I got to Rada, I longed for Wales so much that I would go to one of the studios and put on a CD of Richard Burton reading Under Milk Wood on full blast. Then, after two terms, I got a back injury and had to go home to recover. That was one of the toughest periods of my life. I felt like I’d let everyone down. “Pobol teen Alex wins Rada place” had been a story in the South Wales Guardian, and suddenly I had to return with my tail between my legs.
By the final year, I wasn’t having a great time at Rada. It got competitive and weird. I heard one way to graduate early was to get hired for a job, so when I auditioned for The IT Crowd and got the part, I was thrilled. I went and told the principal – then got a call from my agent moments later: they’d cut my role. Thankfully, my agent managed to convince The IT Crowd people to give me two lines so I could leave.
I was straight out of drama school when I got the role of a young Margaret Thatcher. While I knew I was good enough, I also thought: “They’re never going to cast a girl from a mining town in south Wales.” I had to show them that I could transform into this woman, so I went to a charity shop and bought a blue pencil skirt, a blue jacket and pearls, and got a 1950s set and curl done at the hairdressers. I even had a clutch bag. On the bus to the audition I listened to classical music so I’d feel grand. When I arrived at the waiting room, everyone else auditioning was in skinny jeans and Converse. I thought: “Oh gosh, have I made the wrong decision here?” But I went for it, and it worked. At first I was nervous about going out to the pubs back home that Christmas, especially as my grandad had been a miner. But all that happened was one man turned to me at the bar and said: “You’re playing Maggie, are you? Good on you.” There was pride, rather than animosity.
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Since then I’ve had a lot of luck in my career, especially with the comedy roles. I remember once laughing so much on the set of Hunderby that the first assistant director told me to walk around the block to gather my thoughts. My character had to give birth, while Julia Davis and Jane Stanness stood over me, being witchy and trying to summon the baby out by singing these strange chants. It was impossible. I asked Julia: “How do you keep a straight face?” It turns out you have to pinch yourself, hard.
In 2017, I wasn’t feeling good; I was low in confidence and very anxious. I found a DJ course in Bristol for women and non-binary people. Dance and electronic music has been such a huge part of my life, and my therapy in many ways. I mean, I’ve done loads of therapy, too. But going out dancing is now how I straighten out my head, and I found a community in the local dance scene that was so accepting and wonderful. My DJ name is DJ Dave. I still do the odd friend’s wedding, but I’ve since realised that I love dancing more than I do DJing.
Sometimes you have to go to challenging, dark places to get into a character’s headspace, and I’ve had to develop some methods to leave them behind. I’m playing the character Fran in the drama Hunting Alice Bell soon. She is a serial killer’s girlfriend – and she really clung on to the fibres of my being. After a job like that, I do a lot of somatic work, breathing, and swimming in the River Avon. Dancing in big crowds is pretty cleansing, too.
In my 20s, I built characters from the outside – through the hair, the shoes, the look. Now, I draw far more on who I am. I did a play a couple of summers ago and on the side of the stage I stuck a picture of me from my righteous letter-sending era. The idea was that if thirtysomething Alex ever felt afraid of messing up, she could bring that 12-year-old version on stage for support. Seeing that bold, defiant girl before I stood in front of an audience gave me so much joy. Even if I was scared, she was in me somewhere, having the best time, too.
