Helen Baxendale is perched on a wall, dressed in a flasher's mac and her father's oversized shoes. Across the street, a stand-in wearing her clothes nervously rehearses with James Nesbitt.
We're in Didsbury, the leafy suburban area of south Manchester, on the set of Granada TV's major new thirtysomething drama series, Cold Feet. It's three days from the end of a three-month shoot and the Granada location crew are out in force: vans, cars, caravans, caterers, everyone with mobile phones. Baxendale's parents are there, too. Her mum bombards the crew with questions: "Is it going to be good, do you think? Will there be a second series?" Baxendale's character, Rachel, is at this point required to jog down the street.
A body double is the only option: Baxendale is pregnant and while the camera crew have done their best to hide her bump behind walls and baggy clothes, there is nothing they can do in this scene. Baxendale laughs at the ridiculousness of the situation. "I forgot to bring a change of clothes for these bits, this coat is all that's knocking around. I'll put my clothes back on later," she chuckles. "Oh God, that's a stupid thing to say to a journalist, isn't it?" Baxendale has good reason to be cautious: after landing the role of Emily, Ross's new girlfriend, in Friends last year, every tabloid, lads mag and gossip column wanted a part of her. Stories were written, her family were harassed and the only interview she gave, to Esquire, was, she says, presented so badly that she was "utterly embarrassed by it". Staring seductively out from the front cover, jacket unbuttoned to give a glimpse of her breasts, Baxendale was sold as the archetypal "sextress".
"I was a bit stupid to do it really," she says now, "but people kept asking me and eventually I said yes. I should have done my homework, looked at the quality of the stuff they do. It's quite a tacky magazine." She made a pledge to choose her publications more carefully, only to discover that you don't actually have to speak to the press to be mistreated by them. While in the US promoting the P.D. James adaptation, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, she received a call from a photographer who had snapped her for the show's run in England.
"He asked me if I'd do a piece for Hello! and they offered me a few thousand, but I said I didn't want to be in Hello! - it wouldn't be useful and I'd find it embarrassing." On arrival back in England, she discovered her face splattered all over the magazine in a star feature. She recalls: "The guy had sold them the pictures and they'd cobbled together an article making it look like I'd spoken to them. That really got on my nerves. People can just write what they want about you." Baxendale (27) grew up in Shenstone, near Lichfield in Staffordshire, the elder of two children - her sister is TV writer Katie Baxendale. She now lives in London with the father of her child, on whom she will not be drawn, save to say he is not famous and not an actor. She is, she says, still getting to grips with her own fame.
She is passionate about her work, however, and talks excitedly, like a schoolgirl with a crush, occasionally saying things she shouldn't, then quickly trying to make amends. Most endearing is her lack of conceit, surprising in someone whose career has taken such giant leaps in the past five years. After training at Bristol Old Vic, she headed straight into three months as Toyah Willcox's understudy in Amadeus before settling into two years doing "predominantly obscure European theatre". The BBC hospital drama Cardiac Arrest came soon after, thrusting her into the limelight. "It changed the whole emphasis of my career because it was successful. You can be brilliant in something that's not a success and no one will notice, but if you're all right in a success, you'll get noticed. It's just luck really."
And her luck didn't end there. Next came An Unsuitable Job and the fateful US trip that bagged her a role in the world's best-loved sitcom. "I didn't intend any of it," she says. "I was promoting Unsuitable Job and my boyfriend came with me. The idea was to spend three days in LA, then holiday in San Francisco and New York. Then my American manager suggested I go for Friends." Having sent the producers a tape of her work a couple of months earlier, Baxendale thought she was wasting her time; she'd heard the part had gone to quintessential English girl, Patsy Kensit. "But I went in to see them, did a reading and they offered it to me there and then. It was amazing."
A week later, she found herself sitting in Central Park with Courtney Cox, rehearsing for her first episode. "It just seemed totally surreal to me. I hadn't been a huge Friends fan before, but I certainly knew what the set looked like and who the actors were, and there I was sat in the middle of it all. It was so weird." She was worked hard and kept on her toes, paranoid for the first few weeks that there had been some huge mistake. "I'm nowhere near as funny as they are. It's hard to go into that environment and be hilarious," she says. "I thought I was going to be sacked. Quite a lot of people get sacked. You'd do a read-through with one cast, then they'd just disappear. It was only after I'd done a few episodes that I relaxed and thought, they can't change me now."
Despite reports that the working relationship was less than harmonious, Baxendale insists the cast were "excellent", the writers "brilliant", the experience "fabulous". Still, you sense she wasn't overly impressed by Hollywood and isn't too worried about doing another series. "I don't know if I could go back because of the baby (due in September). I don't know if they want me back, but I'm not bothered, I think I've done enough." And in any case: "I'm petrified of flying! Whenever I go to America, I like to have someone with me. Last time, I traded in a club class ticket for two standards, so my mum could come."
With Cold Feet, she is in her element, surrounded by the best of British talent - James Nesbitt, John Thompson - and working with a script she describes as "different, funny, stylish, dramatic, brilliant". A comedy that started out as a single drama before winning the Golden Rose at the Montreux Television Festival, Cold Feet deals with the lives and loves of three thirtysomething couples: work, children, friendship, marriage. It's been called "an English Friends with babies", but Baxendale says: "I feel more part of Cold Feet than Friends. I've not just come in to play a guest part, I've been here since the beginning.
"It's very real, very ordinary life," she adds. "It deals with things people will be able to associate with. Nothing earth-shattering happens but it's very entertaining." As she looks fondly across to the scene with her stand-in, there's a palpable sense that, despite her globe-trotting and pinup notoriety, Helen Baxendale is happiest here, sitting on a wall in Manchester, in a dirty old mac.
Friends can be seen on Channel 4 on Fridays, Network 2 on Mondays; Cold Feet will be shown in November on ITV.