Hollywood's so seductive, but I'm back for the Bard

SHE used to struggle to pay the rent on her Glasgow flat but now Ashley Jensen lives next door to superstar actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie high in the Hollywood Hills.

However the Ugly Betty star is back in the city to take centre stage in BBC Scotland's Burns night comedy, No Holds Bard, in which she plays pushy single mum Isobel who makes her daughter enter a Burns recital competition so she can bask in her reflected glory.

The all-star cast includes former Chewin' The Fat favourites Ford Kiernan and Greg Hemphill, Dennis Lawson, Bill Paterson and Laura Fraser.

It's all a far cry from La La Land, where she has TV producers fawning after her telling her she's a living goddess.

So has Ashley's head been turned by all the attention? Has two and a half years as Christina McKinney in Ugly Betty and undiluted adoration changed the lady whose party piece was once a terrific Dorothy Paul impersonation?

Fifteen years ago, I remind her, when I first interviewed her, she turned up dressed as though she's spent the afternoon in a costume hire shop trying on clothes - and kept them.

She was wearing gold-spray pumps and a demob-style, grey T-shirt - which all sat rather oddly with the Mickey Mouse hair clasps that sat above her baby face.

"I've changed," she says, with a screeching laugh. "Now I get to walk on red carpets wearing half a million dollars worth of diamonds, people do my hair and make-up for the Golden Globes and the Emmys and it's wonderful."

She adds, laughing: "I could have been doing with them 15 years ago."

What's evident is that it's only Ashley's clothes that have changed - her character remains the same.

"Hollywood is seductive," she admits. "I can see how you could get seduced by the attention. It would be easy...

"And at first it's flattering.

"But then you go to a awards ceremony and everyone is calling your name - until Halle Berry walks out and suddenly you're left standing alone like a complete tube. Believe me, it happened."

Ashley, 40 this year, didn't break any fingernails scratching her way to the top. She simply acted very well in which ever role she landed, and when Ricky Gervais' comedy Extras came along she proved to the world she was a class act as Maggie Jacob. It was that simple.

"I got a lucky break. And I didn't screw it up," she says, self-deprecatingly.

Ashley, who grew up in Annan in Dumfries and Galloway with her single parent mum Margaret, a special needs teacher, has always been grounded.

"People ask me if I'm happy now that I've found success, but I was always happy," she says, smiling.

"One of the happiest times ever for me was working on the Rab C Nesbitt tour, going up and down the country with the rest of the cast. It was fantastic. And I was happy because I considered myself a success back then."

Ashley admits she had a hard time when she first arrived in Hollywood, with a suitcase full of sarongs. (I don't know where I thought I was moving to. Hawaii?') "When I first came out here I thought it would be like it is in the movies, all glamorous, but I found it to be such a hostile place. It looked ugly, unfinished. And all the Americans were so loud.

"People there blow their own trumpets all the time. Scots don't do that. You can't say you're rubbish at something there.

"There's also an assuredness about American actors that we don't have. Like they feel they totally deserve their success and awards.

"I really had to work hard to find things about the place that I liked. But gradually I've come to like it."

So what does she like about the City of Angels?

"I like something of the American attitude, the positivity, whereby anything is possible. Don't get me wrong, I love the Scots stoicism, but I feel we shoot ourselves in the foot at times by holding ourselves back. In Scotland failure is shameful. Here, failure is just a reason to try again."

Ashley still speaks with wonderment in her voice, as though she can't quite believe the Hollywood dream isn't just that. She admits she still gets starstruck. "Until I see the actors lazing about in a chair. And I realise I can do that as well. The reality strips away the illusion. "

She's loved the journey. Not just the Hollywood part, the Emmy nomination, the chance to become better dressed, her entire acting career.

"I've loved the 16 years it took me to get here. And I appreciate every moment of this, the chance to reflect, to compare cultures. But I do know this experience, this life, the home in the Hills, is temporary.

I'm not so self-deluded to think that the success will last for ever. Sometimes I wonder How did I ever get here'? And I laugh to myself.

"But I do know that we (she's married to English actor Terry Beesley) will come back to Britain to live. No question. I miss Scotland. I miss the banter, which, apart from the great cast and script, is one of the reasons I chose to work on No Holds Bard."

Ashley won't miss the LA press attention.

"After Ugly Betty kicked off I was in a coffee bar in Hollywood and the paparazzi came looking for a photo. They asked if I would pose and I said I'd rather not, because I'm basically a private person. But they said they'd take pics anyway, so I did the poses, the smiles."

She adds, breaking into a loud laugh: "The next day in the papers, the photo they used was of me leaving the coffee shop and howking my trousers up my bum." No Holds Bard, BBC1, Sunday 9pm