Sharon Rooney on Ann Summers adventures, Gogglebox aspirations and her "rubbish" Scottish accent

“I thought: ‘I am. You’re right. I’m Ella Mint,’” she recalls. Rooney had found her calling and in that moment a dream took flight. A quarter of a century later and Ella, or rather Sharon, sits opposite me in a quiet corner of Hotel du Vin at One Devonshire Gardens in Glasgow.

The 27-year-old actor was catapulted from relative obscurity and into the public eye with her ground-breaking role as teenager Rae Earl in the Bafta-nominated E4 comedy drama series My Mad Fat Diary in 2013, a show that tackled issues such as mental health, suicide, body image and self-harm.

She has since built her profile in the BBC’s Mountain Goats, Sherlock and Two Doors Down, the latter playing Elaine C Smith’s long-suffering daughter with aplomb. There was also a part in the 2015 film Hector with Peter Mullan.

Her latest role in the forthcoming ITV drama Brief Encounters sees Rooney cast as larger-than-life hairdresser Dawn, a young woman who with her unlikely band of friends (a stellar cast that includes Penelope Wilton, Sophie Rundle and Angela Griffin) swaps a humdrum life in Sheffield circa 1982 for something a tad racier: organising Ann Summers parties.

Rooney admits that when the script first arrived, she couldn’t put it down. “Dawn is one of those characters where I thought: ‘Oh, I know who you are …’ And then, as I scratched the surface, I realised there is so much more to her. At first you do think: ‘Yep, I know your type. You’re the funny and cheeky one. Got it!’ But then you realise she is carrying a lot of heartache.”

Dawn appears bubbly and confident, yet her outward persona, says Rooney, is in contrast to a brewing inner turmoil. As viewers will discover, Dawn’s mother passed away when she was in her teens, leaving her alone with three younger brothers and an alcoholic father.

Rooney is sanguine when talking about the character whose journey she is clearly emotionally invested in. “There would be days where you would have an intense scene and be feeling upset, then the next minute you’d be drawing a penis. The gear changes are big.”

The series is a nostalgia-fest with lashings of electric-blue eyeliner, gaudy geometric knits, crimped hair and Princess Di-inspired high-necked blouses in all their retina-searing glory. Rooney’s character has a penchant for neon leg warmers – the bolder, the better.

While Rooney is too young to have embraced such outlandish style choices first time around (she was born in 1988), that doesn’t mean there haven’t been dalliances. “I went through a phase at college where I wore leg warmers for a good few months,” she says. “I have no idea why. I was never a wacky dresser.

“I had erased it from my memory, but then Dawn’s leg warmers brought it all flooding back. Mine were black while hers are bright colours like pink or blue, and worn with every single outfit.”

Today there’s not a sartorially questionable leg warmer in sight. After initially peering cautiously around the door, Rooney breezes into the room armed with a disarming smile and wicked sense of humour.

She is gregarious and honest and self-deprecating and utterly charming. Rooney admits to planning to play a trick on me where she sent the taxi driver in to pretend she hadn’t showed up. “I’m so glad I didn’t because I would have felt terrible – you’re so nice …” she says, sheepishly.

Whether joking about plans to corner the leisurewear market amid a burgeoning TV boxset binge culture (“believe me, you can never have too many jogging suits or pairs of pyjamas …”), to her sage advice for dealing with cold callers from accident claim firms (an eye-watering list of grisly faux injuries that “has them hanging up the phone pretty quickly”), Rooney is all-round good fun.

She has an expressive face with eyes that widen like those of an owl when outlining a salient point (“I can’t hide how I feel,” Rooney tells me later. “It has been a pain my whole life”) and although sincere when it matters, she generally doesn’t take herself too seriously.

Brief Encounters is about four women who ultimately become masters – mistresses – of their own destiny. I’m curious about how Rooney prepared for the role. It’s easy to forget that while Ann Summers is now a ubiquitous presence on the UK high street, throwing parties back then was still a largely clandestine and risque business.

Rooney had lunch with two women who began organising parties in the 1980s and continue to run them today. “That was such an eye-opener,” she grins. “They said it was all very hush-hush. You wrote down your order on a form, sealed it in an envelope and handed it to the host. Your package was then delivered wrapped in brown paper.”

Then there was the, erm, more hands-on experience with the Ann Summers merchandise. “Those things were heavy,” she says. “There was one called the Stallion and I’m not joking, it was about this size.”

Rooney uses fisherman-style hand gestures to indicate something if not anaconda-sized then certainly the length of a large eel. “I think some of them actually date back to the 1980s so we were a bit like: ‘Er, where did you get these?’ They made dummy ones too and I was much happier handling those. I mean I don’t think they got them from anyone’s bedrooms …”

Although her impression of Edvard Munch’s The Scream suggests she’s not entirely convinced. Moving swiftly on ... How comfortable is Rooney with her family and friends – not least her parents – seeing her wielding sex toys on prime-time telly?

“They’ve seen My Mad Fat Diary so they’ve seen everything,” she says with a shrug. “I’m lucky that my mum and dad are cool that way. They don’t mind.”

Rooney has an impressively high embarrassment threshold. She struggles to name something that would make her blush. “I’m close to my parents and was close to my gran too,” she says. “When you grow up with that closeness, nothing is ever regarded as being off topic. I’ve always been able to talk openly with my parents.

“Jacqueline Gold [the chief executive of Ann Summers] came to watch some filming and gave us all a goody bag. The first person I called was my mum to say: ‘Guess what I’ve got?’ I didn’t think that was odd.”

Finally, Rooney throws me a crumb and conjures up a suitably cringe-inducing memory. “There was one time I went to the video shop when I was younger …” She pauses. “Wait! Remember those? I was always getting fined for taking tapes back late. Anyway, my mum took me and I chose Kevin and Perry Go Large. I think it must have been in the kids section by mistake.”

A quick calculation concludes she would have been around 12 or 13 at the time. She sat down to watch it with her parents but one of the early scenes featured oral sex and she had to leave the room.

“That’s about the only time I can remember being embarrassed, but I think it was more because I didn’t fully understand what was going on. I was watching Benidorm with them last night and we were all laughing together. My parents are quite cool.”

I have a vision of the Rooneys as a family on Gogglebox. “It would be funny because when the TV is on we talk more than we watch,” she says. “When I’ve been away for work all I want to do is come home, have a bath, get a takeaway and watch television with my mum and dad.

“I would love for us to be a Gogglebox family. Maybe if I don’t get any more acting work I’ll write to the show’s makers.”

As entertaining as that sounds, Rooney is unlikely to be professionally resting any time soon. She has recently been cast in Steve Coogan’s new fantasy comedy Zapped! alongside The Inbetweeners’ James Buckley and Games of Thrones actor Paul Kaye. A second series of Two Doors Down is also in the pipeline.

The biggest change since starring in My Mad Fat Diary, says Rooney, is being recognised on the street. Although some of the interactions do leave her baffled. “I’m really approachable. I love chatting and taking photographs,” she says.

“Sometimes people do this thing which makes me laugh where you see them going like this” – she mimes someone attempting to surreptitiously take a picture with their phone – “and I think: ‘What use is a photo of me picking up broccoli?’ They could just say: ‘Let’s take a picture together.’

“Others do this weird passive-aggressive thing where they say: ‘I don’t even know who she is,’ and I always find that funny because it’s not like I’m swanning around Asda with six pugs …”

Rooney has a thing for supermarkets. They’re almost like her church. “I love them,” she enthuses. “Sometimes I don’t even need anything but I’ll go anyway. You have clothes, homeware and food. I can be there for hours.

“I love makeup and enjoy experimenting with that. I may not always do it right but my heart is in the right place. Although my mum won’t let me near her any more. I tried to do a few different looks once and perhaps overdid it a bit. She doesn’t trust me now.”

The only time she clams up is when asked about her parents. While happy to speak in abstract, Rooney looks immediately uncomfortable when pushed for any biographical detail. “They don’t like it,” she says, with an apologetic smile.

She’s back on steadier ground talking about her late grandmother, who passed away a couple of years ago. There is a tattoo on her wrist of a bird. A dove? Rooney breaks into a grin. “A little fat pigeon.”

The word “smile” is written alongside it. “There’s a story behind this,” she says. “My gran and I used to wind each other up and talk about what we would come back as after we died. She used to say: ‘A pigeon’ and I would say: ‘A little fat pigeon?’

“My gran always made me smile. I love this tattoo because everyone always asks about it which means I get to talk about her. It’s the first and last thing I see each day.”

It is one of two tattoos. “Which is two too many if you ask my makeup artist,” quips Rooney. She and her best friend Anna have matching designs. “A little star that says ‘Believe’ on my foot.”

Before landing her breakthrough role in My Mad Fat Diary, Rooney had spent three years working with school-touring group Theatre in Education. A soul-sapping cycle of fruitless auditions coupled with homesickness had taken their toll and she was close to quitting acting altogether.

Now she is Ella Mint – how does that feel? “Weird.” Is it everything she thought it would be? “No. But things are always different than what you think they’ll be like.” Rooney refuses to let fame change her. “I’m still me,” she asserts. “If I ever did get a little big for my boots my family and friends would be quick to say: ‘I don’t think so …’”

She possesses that enviable – and rare – quality of being comfortable in her own skin. It frustrates Rooney when she hears people reel off wish lists – to be thinner, taller, blonder, prettier, richer – that they imagine hold the key to transforming their entire existence.

“Your life would still be shit,” she says. “You would still have bills to pay. You would still have problems. I don’t think it helps when everyone is so judgmental with each other. Just chill out and leave other people alone.”

Nor is she a fan of labels. “The only thing I’m a poster girl for is being yourself. I have always been myself and I don’t know any other way to be.”

There is a staunch refusal to be typecast in her future aspirations either. “I love doing comedy and drama. Someone once told me that I had to choose between being a serious actress or a comedy actress. I never liked that idea. I’m stubborn. If someone tells me that I can’t do something I ask: ‘Why not?’ There is that little bit of rebel inside.”

Rooney has long marched to the beat of her own drum. As a child she would put on a performance for her grandparents every afternoon. She paints a picture of a hilariously precocious child. Or as Rooney succinctly puts it: “I was a pain in the arse.”

If not giving a rambunctious rendition of her favourite Michael Jackson songs, she could be found cajoling her cousins to appear in plays where Rooney had all the best lines and they were bit players idling on the sidelines.

Rooney gives an exaggerated roll of the eyes when recalling her often brattish confidence. “God love my gran and grandpa, I don’t know how they managed to smile and clap while watching the same thing again and again,” she sighs.

“I was always acting, dancing and singing. At any family party there would have to be an allocated slot for me. It usually ended with my dad saying: ‘Right Sharon, that’s the last song’ then me throwing a tantrum so that everyone had to cheer for me to come back and do an encore.”

She had a canny knack for impressions too. “To their faces,” confirms Rooney. “I would stand there and impersonate someone right in front of them.”

In fact, Rooney nailed the Lincolnshire accent for My Mad Fat Diary to such perfection that some fans refused to believe she actually hailed from Glasgow. “People kept saying on Twitter that my Scottish accent was rubbish and why was I getting all these parts?

“After Two Doors Down, a woman came up to me. Her exact words were that my accent was ‘getting there, hen’.” She bites back a grin. “It’s a back-handed compliment, I suppose.”

Such has been the demand for her acting talents that Rooney hadn’t had a proper holiday in yonks. She prefers it that way. “If I’m busy then I’m happy,” she asserts.

As she hops into the taxi to leave, Sharon Rooney gives a last mischievous grin. I watch her go. A young woman off on her next big adventure. One might say she’s in her element.

Brief Encounters begins on STV on July 4 at 9pm. Thanks to Hotel du Vin at One Devonshire Gardens, Glasgow (hotelduvin.com)