Sheridan Smith looks almost unrecognisable as she swaps trademark blonde hair for a new dark brown ‘do
SHERIDAN Smith looked totally different as she graced The One Show sofa last night with a brand new hairdo.
The stage and screen star, 42, has swapped her regular blonde locks for a dark brown shade and joked: “I’m trying to be more grown up.”
The change was complimented by viewers with one writing on X: “Sheridan Smith looked amazing on The One Show tonight.”
Another said: “Sheridan Smith looks lovely tonight. Dark hair really suits her.”
Sheridan’s appearance was less dramatic this time around compared to her last time on the show a few weeks ago.
On that occasion she and Stephen Fry got trapped in a lift moments before they were due to be interviewed.
The actress was on the programme last night to discuss her new West End role.
Sheridan is playing fictional booze-loving stage legend Myrtle Gordon in an adaptation of 1977 cult classic film Opening Night, which documents the character’s public breakdown while performing.
Funny Girl star Sheridan called the role “close to the bone” given her own personal troubles eight years ago due to a combination of alcohol abuse, grief and self esteem issues.
She told Alex Jones: “As the character evolves in the rehearsal room she changes too. Makes me feel a bit more glamorous I think.”
The intensive eight performances a week role is at odds with what Sheridan had intended to do next, but she couldn’t resist playing the unravelling stage star and described it as “life imitating art”.
“I hadn’t planned on doing anything like that, and then this part came along,” she told Alex. “I connected to it so much, and just knew it was the most amazing challenge.
“The [cast and crew] are helping me through and I think it’s gonna be great.”
The play has been adapted for the stage by musician Rufus Wainwright and is directed by the experimental Ivan van Hove.
In a new interview with the Guardian Sheridan admitted she is seeking some kind of redemption through the project.
She said: “I knew I had to do the play as a way of taking control of what I went through. I felt so ashamed of that time. I need to prove I’m not that person. It’s been very cathartic.
“I’m in a stronger place now. We find the truth of a scene, then shake it off and go home. Ivo (Van Hove) doesn’t make you live in angst.”
At the tail end of last year Sheridan declared she was back after years of hell.
While juggling her stage and screen career, the Cilla and Funny Girl actress had to cope with her father dying, then splitting from her partner Jamie Horn, a year after she gave birth to their son, Billy, now three.
Sheridan went through the pregnancy and delivery in the middle of the Covid pandemic, and the 2020 lockdown meant she was denied much of the support a first-time mum would normally receive.
Then, in 2021, just a year after Billy was born, she had the added trauma of splitting from Jamie, an insurance broker, after three years together.
She admitted she had a meltdown after losing her father, who performed with her mum Marilyn as a country and western duo.
Sheridan unravelled at a time when she was firmly in the spotlight playing Fanny Brice in a West End production of Funny Girl, and that only made it all the more difficult.
The same year she says she nearly died after deciding to come off anti-anxiety medication.
She told the Radio Times: “In my crazy mind I thought, ‘I don’t wanna be in rehab — I’ll do it myself’ so I went there and I just stopped my tablets.
“What I didn’t realise is that if you stop the tablets abruptly, you seizure. And to cut a long story short, I got seizures five times and got rushed into A&E.
“Weirdly, a friend of mine rang me and she came to the hotel. It’s a miracle she did. It was like someone was looking out for me.
“She’s the one who got me breathing again.”