Rosamund Hanson plays girls who are a step behind the conversation: Smell in Shane Meadows's This Is England, Cheryl in Life's Too Short. She plays them without a trace of condescension, and what we remember afterwards is the kindness.
Fi1m perspective
Cheryl, the secretary in Life's Too Short, is asked to take a message and cannot. Not will not; cannot. Rosamund Hanson plays the moment with nothing on her face at all, as if the request had come in a language she almost speaks, and the laugh comes from how badly she wants to help. In a room full of men being pleased with themselves she is the only warmth, and we found ourselves waiting for her to come back into shot. That is an odd thing to feel about a bit-part in a mockumentary, and it is the reason she is worth a page.
She arrived as Smell in Shane Meadows's This Is England (2007), the girl in the gang who attaches herself to Thomas Turgoose's Shaun. It is an ensemble film and we did not single her out when we reviewed it; what she brings is the loyalty and the small everyday detail that make the gang look like somewhere a lonely boy would want to be. She then stayed with the part through three television sequels, This Is England '86 (2010), '88 (2011) and '90 (2015), following the character to the end of the decade with Meadows, Turgoose and Vicky McClure alongside her each time. Between the first two came Cheryl, and a Bonnie Tyler in Shameless (2011).
The two parts are closer than they look. Both are young women who are not quite keeping up, and Hanson's habit in each is to play the lag as attention rather than stupidity: Smell watches Shaun, Cheryl watches Warwick, and neither of them is laughing at anyone. She has said she builds these people from observation, "I like to play around with strange people’s personalities," and it shows in the slowness, which is particular and never cartoon. Gervais and Merchant wrote Cheryl almost nothing, and she made her the one thing in that series that is not a joke at somebody's expense.
What she has not been given is a lead, or a woman who is cleverer than everyone around her. Nearly all the attention she has had rests on these two roles, and on this evidence we cannot say what she would do with a clever one. Nothing of any size has appeared since This Is England '90. If Meadows ever goes back to that gang, she should be the first call; if he does not, somebody else ought to find out what she does with a different sort of girl.
Biography
Rosamund Hanson is an English actress. She played the role of Smell in the film This Is England (2006) and reprised it in the television sequels This Is England '86 (2010), This Is England '88 (2011) and This Is England '90 (2015).
Born on 24 September 1989, Hanson trained at the Central Junior Television Workshop. Her other television roles include Bonnie Tyler in Shameless (2011) and Cheryl in Life's Too Short (2011–2013). She is the daughter of clothes designer Daniel Hanson.
