Actress Claire Goose will be appearing next month in ITV’s police drama The Bill as the new Sergeant Rachel Weston.
Born in Edinburgh, she grew up in Norfolk before attending the Italia Conti stage school in London at 16. She established herself as nurse Tina Seabrook in the BBC drama Casualty and more recently played a detective, Mel Silver, in Waking the Dead. Goose made her movie debut in 2001 in the horror film Alone.
Goose, 33, is married to the scriptwriter Craig Woodrow, 34. They live in Chiswick, west London.
How much money do you have in your wallet?
I have £8.27. I normally don’t take out more than £40 at cash machines. That will last me the week. I’m a slave to work so I don't get a chance to spend much anyway.
I like to have some change for a coffee — there’s a Starbucks round the corner from where we’re filming. I tend to use my debit card for my daily shopping.
Do you have any credit cards?
I have a Virgin Money Visa but I only really use it when I go abroad to take cash out. I know it’s not the most effective way to do it but I’m normally in such a last-minute rush that I never get round to organising things like foreign cash.
I have to say, though, Craig was brilliant when we went to New Zealand for our honeymoon in January. He shopped around and found Nationwide don’t charge fees for foreign cash withdrawals, so we opened an account and put a great big lump sum into it before we went there.
Are you a saver or a spender?
Probably more of a saver although I love spending money on interior decorations. Having said that, I haven’t spent anything on the house recently. We spent a lot of money when we got married so we’ve decided to slow down for a bit.
Whenever I earn money I never for a second think all of the money’s mine. I tell myself that about half of any money I earn is for the taxman.
How much did you earn last year?
With the acting, repeat fees and voiceovers it’s probably getting into the six-figure mark. For a voiceover you might get anywhere between £150 and £250 an hour. You also get paid every time it’s used. I recently did a radio advert for BHS.
I love voiceover work because it’s very different from acting on screen and there isn’t all that pressure for make-up.
Have you ever been really hard up?
When I first came to London from Norfolk, I was quite hard up. I was 16 at the time and at drama school.
Dad gave me an allowance for my living expenses but I remember when my roommate and I had a fiver between us for the whole weekend. We went to the supermarket and bought a box of cereal, a pint of milk, some toast and some butter and that’s all we ate — we were pretty sick of it by the end.
The day I left college, I told dad that I didn’t want any money from him. I wanted to start for myself. I got a part-time job at the NSPCC children’s charity — I didn’t get a full-time job as I needed to be free for things like auditions.
Do you own a property?
We have a two-bedroom maisonette in Shepherds Bush, west London. I bought that in 2002 for £272,000. I lived there for a number of years but I now rent it out. People say it’s worth about £400,000 but you never know in the current market. The mortgage on it is about £282,000 so we probably have about £100,000 or so in equity. We paid off the mortgage on the flat, but we remortgaged that to put a deposit down on our house in Chiswick in 2004. It’s a three-bedroom Victorian terrace which we bought for £410,000. Other places on our road are probably worth about £525,000 to £550,000.
