Page 23 - Fujifilm Exposure_4 Samantha Janus_ok

Main photo facing page: Her first tough role in Breeders (aka Rampage) and above top: the glamour puss shot: Griff Rhys Jones in Up ‘N’ Under: Samantha in training gear and again with her co-stars in Up ‘N’ Under, Gary Olsen and the late Brian Glover.
BLONDE BOMBSHELL BLONDE BOMBSHELL
Samantha Janus on singing, marriage, changing her image... and rugby league!
They say that blondes have more fun. Try telling that to bombshell Samantha Janus after she’s spent days on a remote rugby field in South Wales, bat- tered, bruised and up to her armpits in mud. This was the real world in West Yorkshire of the writer and director John Godber’s film comedy, Up ‘N’ Under, being craftily recreated just a kick away from the Rhondda Valley. And Sam, as the unlikeliest mem- ber of the district’s worst amateur league Sevens side (which, Rocky-style, goes straight for glory) was revelling in this tough man’s world.
She plays divorcee and health club owner Hazel Scott, a career-driven lass who refuses to be anyone’s sex object. First recruited to bring some very droopy lads (TV favourites Neil Morrissey and Gary Olsen among them) up to an acceptable fitness level, Hazel finally gets a chance to achieve her real ambition - on the actual playing turf. Yes, with all the usual jokes about hookers!
So can Sam, 25, finally break through the “bimbo barrier”? She’s proud of her work as a teenage singing starlet, her role as waitress Nicole In Pie In The Sky and as the delectable Mandy in the BBC2 hit sitcom, Game On. She was also thrilled by rave reviews when she appeared in a recent West End revival of the musical Grease.
She leans back on a sofa in her cardigan, black trousers, white sweater and heavy-duty trainers: “I don’t know what it is about women spending hours making themselves up in the mornings,” she smiles. “I reckon I spend an hour, touching this, dabbing that and I still look dreadful.
“ I simply don’t see this ‘sexy blonde creature’ that I often read about. In fact, I am ultra-critical about the way I look. I do anything to avoid mir- rors. When I see people staring at me I get para- noid. I think I’ve snagged my tights or that my sus- pender belt is hanging out of my skirt.”
Most girls, not surprisingly, would kill to get the kind of attention that has come Sam’s way since she burst on to the pop scene (but popped) when, as a teenager, she sang A Message To Your Heart in the 1991 Eurovision Song Contest.
There has been a definite hangover from those scary, wild days and she hasn’t been in a
recording studio since she teamed with David Essex three years ago in a performance album of Disney’s Beauty And The Beast.
“I’ve always loved singing and writing,” says Sam who trained at the Sylvia Young Stage School. “It’s been that way since I was 14. But I lost control of who I was and where I was going. It didn’t do me any long-term harm but the experience taught me to be very careful about people I should trust.”
Happily, the work is pouring in. Shortly before Up ‘N’ Under, she co-starred with American actor Todd Jensen in Breeders (aka Rampage), a low budget sci-fi shocker shot on the Isle Of Man. She recalls: “I was running around with a shotgun shooting aliens. It was... weird but wonderful.”
Last year, she also found time to make a quick dash to Las Vegas with her boyfriend, British Airways steward Mauro Mantovani for a quiet wedding surrounded by close friends and family.
Sam’s now absolutely determined to try and break away from that image, admitting that she has done some dumb blonde things in the past but now it’s time to move up and move on.
“You have to create greater horizons. I can’t afford to stand still or I’ll get stuck forever playing stupid girls. I feel a bit like Hazel in Up ‘N’ Under. She has to stand on her own two feet. She’s going to make her own way, no matter what. As they say, no pain ... no gain.” ■ IVAN WATERMAN
Up ‘N’ Under and Breeders (aka Rampage) were photographed respectively by Alan M. Trow BSC and Peter Thornton. Both were originated on Fujicolor Motion Picture Negative.