With starring roles in Spooks and Ashes To ashes Keeley Hawes could have a superstar lifestyle. But she prefers to roll just like the rest of us…

Keeley Hawes confesses to being boring no less than six times in half an hour when we meet on a Friday afternoon In an East London coffee shop.

But I can’t help but feel like the lady doth protest too much. She wants to paint herself as boring, she wants to blend in, clad in a black smock dress and black gladiator sandals, with aviators tucked into her collar, her face framed by a new heavy fringe.

“That’s the character she’s decided to play today “. I think, as she cups her mug of tea with both hands and slips off her gold snake bracelet to stop it clanging against the table as she speaks. There will be no scandalous revelations out of her and those hazel doe-eyes that narrow ever so slightly when asked a question she’s not expecting. No, the only thing she’ll confess to, apologetically, is feeling “quite smug”.

Sort of understandable. As one of the most recognisable faces on British television, Hawes, who has starred in numerous hits including the BBC’s Tipping The Velvet (2002) and Upstairs Downstairs (2012) has been appearing on our screens for 24 years now.

She found acclaim in the long-running Spooks, but it was playing ballsy Alex Drake in Ashes To Ashes, navigating her way through criminal underworlds and a sexist police force that she really struck a chord.

This autumn in the UK version of the Scandinavian crime drama, The Bridge for Sky Atlantic (re-worked by Spooks writer Ben Richards and re-named The Tunnel) she’ll be assuming a role on the other side of the law playing a murder suspect addicted to prescription drugs.

Consciously avoiding the original so as to not be influenced, Hawes tells me she recently got her fill of crime drama watching The Returned. “Oh. My. God. I’d love to be in that but I can’t speak any French”, she gushes. “They’re all beautiful, swanning around in gorgeous clothes, having just chucked it on being brilliant and sexy – love that show. Come on remake!”

The afternoon we meet, the born and bred Londoner is jetting back to Belfast where she’s just spent 14 weeks wearing no make-up, filming the second series of BBC Two’s critically acclaimed police drama Line Of Duty. “No make-up absolutely terrifies me”, she shrieks. “They were like ‘no – you’re being waterboarded today, there’s no point'”.

Although she acknowledges that going bare-faced was liberating, as a self confessed neat-freak who likes everything just-so (she reveals that for the last 30 minutes she’s been itching to move a serviette which had fallen out of place in its holder and which she now folds up neatly on her saucer) I can see how this might have played upon her neuroses.

“I’m too tidy,” she says of her idiosyncrasy. I tidy up other people’s things. I even annoy myself with it!”

Trying her hand at comedy next she’s about to take on her first major theatre role. Barking In Essex, a riotous tale about a dysfunctional family who reside in the infamously bling home county. Co-starring Lee Evans and Sheila Hancock, she is nauseatingly nervous about it. “I did a play at the National Theatre a couple of years ago – Rocket To The Moon – because I’d never done theatre, so it was like putting my toe in. It’s such a different thing to working on screen, it wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy it, but I didn’t think ‘I can’t wait to do another play ‘. Then I was sent this one and I was like ‘Please, let me be in this play!'”

Classing this year as her best ever professionally, Keeley has found a fresh enthusiasm for what she does but admits the uncertain nature of the business is a constant mental struggle, “It’s strange, in this career you don’t know if you’ll ever work again… when you’re at home you’re just sat thinking ‘Oh, there are jobs going on everywhere! Why can’t I get a job?’ Then when you’re on set you’re wishing you could be with the kids in the garden. We have to remind each other to just try and enjoy time at home otherwise you end up wishing everything away!'”

The “we ” is of course in reference to her husband, fellow actor Matthew Macfadyen, who she met on Spooks in 2002.

“He always comes across as a very serious chap,” she shares lovingly. “But he’s just the worst giggler in the world. He’s a laugh to be with on set.”

Describing the family’s home in south west London as her favourite place to be, time spent with kids Maggie, eight, Ralph, six, and Myles, 15, (From Hawes’ first marriage to cartoonist Spencer McCallum) is sacred.

Despite a love of travel (they recently got a passport for Nana their Coton de Tulear dog) holidays are hard to fit into their hectic schedules.

“Me and my husband went to Mauritius the first time for a late honeymoon [they married in 2004] and we returned again because we wanted to take the kids back. I would like to take them on a big trip to India, none of us has ever been.”

As someone who prefers saving for life’s luxuries, you won’t catch the actress, 37, in wellies slumming it in a campsite. “I’m a natural really posh hotelier, I don’t enjoy being bitten by mosquitos. And that is what generally happens to me if I make my way outside anywhere in the countryside!”

While a love of India has influenced their palettes, Hawes – who was brought up by her father, a London cabbie and housewife mother – jokes that while Matthew is a whizz at recreating their favourite dishes, her role as sous chef extends as far as opening a suitable bottle of wine. “He’s a natural. He does a great puttanesca, oh, and great curries because he spent a lot of time in Indonesia growing up. I’ll open a cupboard and say, ‘Oh god, there’s nothing in there, we’ll have to get a takeaway! Then he’ll say, ‘no, hang on a minute’ and the next thing there’s this amazing thing put together. Lucky me.”

“I really like a glass of wine,” she continues mischievously. “Who doesn’t? But I know it’s no good for you. I’m not an alcoholic, but it’s seasonal. Now is time for Pimm’s, rosè and white, then you move into red, mulled wine, and then champagne, to punctuate. I do have a grasp on it – it’s a guilty pleasure. But there isn’t a hip flask tucked away in my bag.”

With Matthew as the family cook, her preferred method to unwind is knitting. “I knitted a teddy bear scarf, with tassels!” she laughs, holding out her hands to demonstrate that it was about 30cm long. Reading, she adds, is also a huge shared interest for them both. “We were reading a lot of Sarah Waters at one point,” she explains. “We made our way through her entire back catalogue and now we’re like ‘Come on Sarah, pull your finger out!’ because we need more.”

“Fortunately as Matthew describes Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl as, “the best book ever,” that’s the novel currently residing on her bedside, ready and waiting to be thumbed.

So, yes, Hawes’ life could be described as boring – but in the best possible way.

“You can always be richer or thinner but I’m so much happier than I’ve ever been.”