'I like that thing where you become completely uninhibited,' announces Tara Fitzgerald, slouching back into the folds of a comfy couch, drink in one hand, Marlboro Light in the other.

Not long ago, Tara earned herself a reputation as an actress who wasn't shy about showing her bits. She glided sweetly into the acting world with a series of, to use her own words, 'keks-off' parts, namely in The Camomile Lawn, Anglo-Saxon Attitudes, and Sirens, the film she did with Hugh Grant. That was a couple of years back, but it's something she usually brings up early in interviews, just to get that bit out of the way. But, here in the lounge room of a private West End drinking club, she's not talking about acting. No, we're more in the realms of Stamford Bridge than Stanislavki: for Tara is rhapsodising about her recently-developed passion - football.
'One of the first games I went to was at night. The atmosphere was incredible. It took my breath away,' she enthuses of the unrestrained passions of the terraces.

Tara was introduced to the game by her live-in boyfriend Dorian Healy - Captain Voce in Soldier Soldier - who is something of a fanatic. 'I think you can go one of two ways with football. You can either go, "That's a part of his life I never want to be involved with," or you can just get up to date with it.' They live in gobbing distance from Dorian's beloved Chelsea, so there's no excuse for not going to watch. 'I don't get dragged - I go willingly,' insists Tara, whose allegiances lie much further north. 'I'm afraid I'm a bit of a Cockney Red,' she says, admitting her fascination with Manchester United and a certain big-nosed Frenchman. 'I love Eric Cantona. He's a bit of a dreamboat.'

Well, he's French isn't he. 'Yes, true, but I like him much more than Ginola.'

So what is it about Eric? His delicate first touch? His goal-scoring prowess?

'No,' comes the reply. 'Eric is more romantic.' Always a useful attribute to have if you're 2-1 down against Newcastle with five minutes to go. But to be fair, Tara does appreciate the finer details of footy. 'I even understand about offside,' she smiles through a cloud of cigarette smoke. 'I remember watching games on telly with blokes and realised I kept asking questions at inopportune moments. There's nothing more maddening.'

Very annoying. But it is encouraging - not to mention rather sexy - that previously uninterested women are suddenly volunteering lengthy critiques of England's fluent midfield performances.

'I like the new woman thing of having a lager and watching football,' she admits, having done just that with a few friends throughout Euro 96. 'It's very exciting. It's good to let off steam.'

So, has she ever sworn at a referee? 'Yes,' she laughs. 'How does it go?..." She sings quietly into the hushed surroundings of The Soho House: 'The referee's a wanker...' Filtered through Tara's clipped, eloquent tones, the swearing sounds almost quaint.

'I did have a sarf London accent, but I polished that up when I went to drama school,' she admits. Tara's conversation is now peppered with phrases like 'oneself' and 'darling.'

But let's get the half-time oranges out, take a break and hark back to when Tara Fitzgerald was better known as Dirty Beads, a nickname she earned during her teenage clubing era, when she'd go to places like The Wag, Legends and Crazy Larry's, wearing big, chunky necklaces. 'I was really into funk,' she recalls. 'I had a lumberjack shirt, all the gear, and used to go out in a little posse. I loved all that.'

She was also to learn that being trendy wasn't without its pitfalls. 'I remember a time when I went to have a haircut at Vidal Sassoon training school. I wanted a bob. I came out two hours later with this haircut-from-hell. I had shaved bits. It was awful - I was devastated.'

She became restless with the scene and escaped to Europe: 'I had to get things out of my system.' On returning she auditioned for drama school and waitressed to cover the bank loan she'd used to pay her tuition fees. She didn't quite reach a Pot-Noodle-level of existence, as she was living at home with her mother, but many of her colleagues didn't have the same luxury.

'They came from different parts of the country and were living in pretty horrible conditions,' remebers Tara. And it wasn't the typical student one-lecture-a-week-doss either. 'We worked really long days. We got in at nine and finished at eight, but it was one of my best times,' she reminisces. 'We were very bohemian, very broke. We'd go to the pub and nurse our half-pints of lager all night.'

It is a world away from her current drinking. In the last 20 minutes she has chugged two Virgin Marys - Bloody Marys without the vodka - which will be paid for by credit card.

'The Margarita's good here too. You're supposed to have one for each nipple and one for yourself,' announces Tara, who is known to like a night out on the sherbet. When she was getting into character as the prim vicar's wife in Sirens she gave up alcohol. 'It was quite difficult for Tara,' noted Hugh Grant at the time, 'because she likes to party.'

Her drama training - which leaned heavily towards method acting - was, she says, like one long therapy session. 'The idea was to break an actor's ego down and rebuild it. They did a documentary on the school a couple of years ago and people were shocked at the emotional stripping that went on.'

For Tara, whose father killed himself when she was 11 (though she didn't find out it was suicide until she was 19), the experience was cathartic. 'I went through a gamut of emotions when I found out - grief, lack of comprehension, guilt. My father had huge artistic feelings, but at the time he was living in Essex teaching people to drive. He was leading the sort of hum-drum life he had never wanted. Suicide was his way of taking back control of his life. When I was on the drama course I realised how blocked I was about his death. It helped you to find your way to the truth. That sounds a bit wanky, but it really helped.'

She feels the internal rummaging was even more challenging for the blokes on the course: 'I think it's harder for a man to admit he's an actor. Either they come from a middle-class, repressed background or they are from Manchester or somewhere and it's seen as poncey to be an actor.'

She didn't have to do much of the struggling actress bit, landing her first film role in Hear My Song within two weeks of leaving college. It wasn't quite as easy as it appears. Tara was the first to audition for the role, but the director then saw another 100 actresses before deciding on her. With her next job, the West End play, Our Song, she got to grapple nightly with Peter O'Toole and had people like Quentin Tarantino and Keanu Reeves coming backstage to shake her hand after the show. Hollywood's been knocking, but not loudly enough. Currently she prefers the English side of the business. And anyway they don't like football or people who smoke over there. American scripts she gets sent tend to end up by her phone as notepads.

Right now she's content to act with homegrown talent like Hugh Grant (who she's co-starred with twice), Adrian Dunbar (who wrote Hear My Song), Rupert Graves (her co-star in the forthcoming BBC costume drama The Tenant of Wildfell Hall) and her good friend Ewan McGregor, who she buddied up with while filming Brassed Off. 'With Ewan it's more mates than passion,' she confides.

Tara is McGregor's love interest in the film - the story of a group of miners threatened with redundancy who play a colliery band. For research she bought a stack of brass band CD's. 'The assistant looked at me strangely and said: "Whatever turns you on." The thing was, I got into the music. These miners are tough but once they start playing their instruments they become different creatures. It's very moving.'

Sitting here listening to Tara speak is like hearing the breathy tones of a wind instrument. Her voice has a rasping, almost baritone quality (what Demi Moore's grown up daughter would've sounded like if she'd married Barry White). It's very relaxed. Another interview is going on quietly in the far corner of the club. Very cosy; a million miles from the terraces of Chelsea and Manchester United. Tara could invite Eric Cantona here. He'd like it. He could relax, be a bit esoteric or romantic, maybe even drop-kick a waitress.