One of the reasons Rachel Jackson started acting was the transformations. Give her a tracksuit, or a cardigan, or a stone-and-a-half in weight, and she will become someone else.
Lots of actors would draw the line at chunking up to play a character. Not Rachel. When the director of Beats – tipped as the next Trainspotting – asked her to play the main character’s well upholstered big cousin, she was first in line for a bacon roll.
Rachel’s first audition was for another character. Then she was offered the part of Wendy, described in the script as “extremely overweight”.
She said: “I was a bit heavier at the time but not much. I thought, ‘Is that how people see me?’ It was a horrible, horrible feeling.”
Then the director pulled her aside and said: “Don’t worry about that, we just wanted you.”
Her costume was “a great big tracksuit”. A catering truck with great food was on set. “I went for it,” she said.
And then, when filming finished two years ago, she went for it at the gym, lost the weight and then some.
At the premiere, at Glasgow Film Festival in February, Rachel rocked up in a shimmering green column dress. The rest of the cast’s eyes were hanging out of their heads. It was a sweet moment.
She said: “I turned up on the red carpet after I’d been going to gym pretty heavily. Wendy no more, b****es.”
Rachel, 31, added: “I want to be the kind of actor who can dip in and out.
“I’ll walk down the street and people think they know me from somewhere but they won’t be sure because I play all these different characters.”
Even at this stage in her career, Rachel’s range is impressive.
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Wendy does not have much in common with the deranged damp woman in the fish headress on the poster for her comedy show, Slutty Little Goldfish.
Neither are anything like the nail technician in Karen Gillan’s film The Party’s Just Beginning, who had amazing talons but a terrible bun.
They are all Edinburgh-born Rachel and, as far as she’s concerned, they’re only the start of a comedy and acting career that has the potential to go all the way.
She said: “I’ve been an actress a lot longer than a comedian. I worry people think I’m being greedy at a buffet but I just love both.
“I love horror. I would love to be a scream queen. I am just so ambitious. I think I am greedy to a certain extent. I can go into different genres – comedy, horror, drama.”
As well as Beats, Rachel stars in an indie horror film I Saw Black Clouds.
She’s in the BBC Scotland comedy series The State of It and is taking Slutty Little Goldfish to the Edinburgh Fringe.
She has achieved all this since leaving London and moving back to Scotland in 2016, the opposite of the way it’s supposed to happen.
After studying at Rose Bruford College, she spent seven miserable, skint years in London scraping round acting auditions and dishing out free cereal bars.
“I spent so long trapped in a crappy little bedsit wondering what is the purpose of life,” she said.
“I did a lot of promo work. I was the girl at the train station handing out crisps.
“One guy hissed at me like a snake when I tried to give him a Lucozade shot at 6am at Victoria Station.”
Her comedy evolved from her one-woman play, Memoirs of a Bunny Boiler. It began as a monologue about her disastrous love life and features “stories that, when you tell people, they ask if they need to call the police”.
As she performed it, the audience started getting involved. There would be chatting and ad-libbing.
Rachel said: “I was becoming a stand-up without realising it. People had always told me I was funny but it hadn’t clicked.
“At Rose Bruford, I was frustrated, playing Keira Knightley roles that are so not me.
“I always knew I was a good comedy actress but I hadn’t made the connection.”
Comedy has, Rachel said, saved her life. She added: “I can’t believe how much it’s helped my acting career, being busy, being out every night, meeting people.
“Producers see me. I’m not just an actress waiting for her phone to ring, I’m out making stuff happen.”
She hopes that Beats will be the breakthrough role she’s ready for.
She said: “I have an amazing feeling about it.
“From the screenings and the premieres and the reviews, people have been comparing it to Trainspotting.
“It’s a two-boy story, I’m one boy’s big cousin, but just to be part of that gang and part of this film that could blow up is very exciting.
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“It’s the kind of thing I’ve wanted to do, something Scottish, something gritty, something that could be aligned with Trainspotting.
“There hasn’t been another Scottish film that’s hit that sweet spot. The world’s ready for another one.”
Wendy was a role Rachel relished. She said: “I’ve got a personal ego but I don’t have a work ego at all. I want to do the best job I can.
“I’m the sporty one, my family is described as scum, I was put in this tracksuit. I didn’t have my stomach out, there was no pressure to look a certain way.
“I’m blonde. I feel like I’m capable of playing anything but if actors look a certain way, that’s the kind of roles they’re going to be put up for.”
That’s just one of the ways Rachel needs the industry to change.
“I want to be known as a really good actress who can melt into roles.”
● Beats opens on May 17.
