HERMIONE Norris’s slight frame, fine bone structure and piercing grey eyes are immediately recognisable to anyone with a TV set – after all, she’s played some of the most identifiable characters on the small screen.

From restrained, middle-class Karen in Cold Feet to icily calm Ros in Spooks, the 43-year-old has forged a career playing strong, educated and self-contained women.

It’s a far cry from growing up in Southend, where mum Helen still lives.

Her latest role, as therapist Cassie Manson in ITV’s update to the 1970s hit series Bouquet of Barbed Wire, starts tonight.

When Andrea Newman’s 1969 novel was first adapted by ITV in 1976, it shocked audiences.

Hermione, 43, who in real life is quietly spoken, friendly and open, admits the risque connotations of the original series made her wary of accepting the part.

“I was nervous of it,” she laughs. “Because every time you mention Bouquet of Barbed Wire, people kind of gasp, and mention the 1970s production which wiped the floor with people.”

She pauses, struggling to find the right words. “I was nervous of reading the script because I thought this could be really, well, tacky actually, and sensationalist, and some of the things the characters do are despicable.”

Bouquet of Barbed Wire also stars Trevor Eve as Cassie’s husband Peter, Imogen Poots as their daughter Prue, and Tom Riley as the sinister Gavin.

Hermione is quick to agree that family secrets and unrealised expectations provide rich pickings for TV drama.

“I’m sure every family is dysfunctional, and I’m sure psychologically it’s a rich vein for drama, because everybody’s compromising themselves on some level,” she says.

Her own family life, however, seems as distant as possible from the dysfunctional one displayed on screen. After falling for and marrying Simon Wheeler, a TV executive seven years her junior, she’s now mother to son Wilf, six, and toddler daughter Hero, and is kept busy juggling the rival demands of career and family.

“I’m lucky I guess, because it’s not for 52 weeks of the year, so I’ll do a stint of really intense filming and then I’ll do nothing at all,” she says.

“I don’t take my work home with me, I don’t learn lines at home, I’ll learn them at work and in the car, on my way in and out of work, because my time with my children is very much mine, I’m very protective of that.”

Despite her obvious drive and passion for her career, she’s vehement that she doesn't want either of her children to follow in her footsteps and enter the acting world.

“No, absolutely not,” she shakes her head emphatically. “No way do I want them to be actors, because it’s a way of life, it’s not a job.

“I would love them to be able to just do something that they love, and to do a job and get paid for it, rather than hear, ‘No, you’re not good enough, we don’t want you, we want her’ or, ‘We don’t want you, we want him’.”

Hermione’s parents divorced when she was a child, and she and her two sisters and one brother were brought up by their mother. After several years at a ballet school, she attended Lamda, and admits that only a fierce drive to become an actress inured her to criticism and competition.

“I was willing to do honestly anything, and I suppose that was what was required, really,” she shrugs.

“Just the desire to want to do it. That focus was what kept me going, not what occurred, or what actually happened. That was almost irrelevant.”