'It Was a Relief to Discover That I Did Fit in the Real World ; Brought Up in an Organisation with an Often Punishing Schooling Regime, Actress and Novelist Clara Salaman Endured a Troubled Childhood. But After Breaking Free at the Age of 14, She Forged a Life of Her Own, and Finally Found Happiness. So What Made Her Want to Revisit Her Painful Past?

Summary

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Here in a Covent Garden hotel, dressed

Hin skinny jeans and swinging a crisp boutique carrier bag which suggests she stopped off somewhere expensive, Clara Salaman looks pretty much how you'd expect if you knew only her scant biographical details: an actress turned writer who lives in London with her actor boyfriend and their two sons. She's blond, attractive, a little funky.

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Extract

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'It Was a Relief to Discover That I Did Fit in the Real World ; Brought Up in an Organisation with an Often Punishing Schooling Regime, Actress and Novelist Clara Salaman Endured a Troubled Childhood. But After Breaking Free at the Age of 14, She Forged a Life of Her Own, and Finally Found Happiness. So What Made Her Want to Revisit Her Painful Past?

In the few interviews that she has given, mainly between 1999 and 2001 when she played DS Claire Stanton in The Bill, Clara has painted a careful yet colourful self-portrait. She has mentioned attending 'philosophy lessons' aged four, being expelled from school at 14 and divorced by 25 (her husband was a deck hand and always at sea; their marriage lasted two years). She met her partner, Paul Brennan, in 1998 when they played psycho-killers in the touring production of Ben Elton's Popcorn. While pregnant with their first son, she told one journalist that she intended to go...

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