An entertaining, fictional look at the rigours faced by the jobbing actress…
“You are in room 302, enjoy your stay!” Belinda Denton hands over the room security card as she secretly checks her reflection in the sliding glass doors opening and closing upon a variety of nationalities fit to rival a UNICEF conference. Like any other well-trained hotel receptionist, the smile does not leave her face until businessman number ten of the morning, marching briskly to the lifts, has disappeared out of view. What he doesn’t know is that perfectly groomed Belinda, with the dapper red suit and matching lipstick snatched from her dresser in haste this morning, was handing out leaflets in Leicester Square dressed up as a chicken last week. The week before that, she was serving cocktails in the ground floor bar of the Longacre Hotel, graciously refusing invitations from oily-gelled, gold-toothed punters” while a few months earlier she was promoting a pouty C-lister’s new perfume in Selfridges, sporting leopard-print tights. Her next job will involve selling tickets at a box office call centre. The clothes vary but the smile always stays the same.