why mum's the word

Tyson, 35, award-winning actress, single mother, feminist, is no push-over. In this whole sorry business of the journalist snorkelling around the shoreline of her personal life, going ten rounds with Tyson was a tough contest. She ate us for lunch and sprinkled some of what was left in her double espresso.

At first, she holds questions about her beauty at a distance, as if they were mucus samples. But we persist, declaring it must be so hard for her because she has this awesome attractiveness: she's a gasper. She is serene and flawless, the clear olive skin highlighted by a megawatt smile, the glorious corona of hair scraped tightly back from her forehead, accentuating the classical bone structure. ''What are you pumping me up with all these comments for?'' she responds with a hard stare. But the fact she is in a great mood helps.

And Tyson today is nothing but utterly accommodating. She says: ''I give men credit to be able to look beneath the skin. I suppose if I saw someone who was really good looking, I don't tend to go for them directly. You can always tell if they are really into themselves. They look sure of themselves. They are not looking out. They are wanting everyone to look at them. I think that you can tell that with a beautiful person as well, if they are really looking out - that is what I look for in people. I think it is more about what they are watching than them I am much more interested in.''

One might reasonably exercise caution when approaching Tyson on personal matters. She has endured some real traumas which the tabloids have milked for all their worth. To recap, at 24 there was a very public divorce from Red Dwarf actor Craig Charles, whom she married when she was 19. At 21, she was an overnight success, playing Simone, the prostitute with whom cockney driver Bob Hoskins falls in love in Neil Jordan's romantic thriller Mona Lisa. She also juggles her film, TV and theatre career with her most important role as mother to 12-year-old Jack.

Tyson says motherhood keeps her grounded in a world of inflated egos: ''Motherhood was great for me. I had never had normality from the age of 18. I had always wanted children. A child brought that. I am going to be doing a play soon, in Southampton. I'll be away soon for four weeks. At first I was like, I can't bear to tear myself away from home. I always feel like that just before the job. I panic. When you go away from home, your routine can seem to fly out the window.

''I don't know what I would have been if I had not been a mother. Jack has made my life. My son, he has made me learn a lot more and helped build my strengths. The chief learning curve for myself, I suppose, was that I am more patient. Dealing that closely with another human being and knowing that your actions can affect them. I think whatever you do well, whether it be motherhood or anything else, you gain self respect, you are proud of yourself and you know and believe in yourself. I think it is an art, motherhood. I always have done since Jack was born.''

Would it not have been a lot easier on them both if there had been a father figure around too? ''I don't know what it is like to be a man. All I was thinking about is I need a good parent, whatever sex they are. I don't understand what you are saying. I don't think your family has necessarily got more than what my family has either. That may be to your disadvantage to assume so. I just know Jack is extremely strong.

''In a way, because you are a single parent, people make certain assumptions about you. But when you are married they don't. They leave you alone. You are sorted. People don't start asking: 'What kind of marriage have they got?' People just back off as though they are sorted. I think, well, it is quite safe and convenient to hide in a marriage. I am talking about how people don't ask married people questions that they ask single parents. Married people don't tend to get touched yet they can have very unhappy marriages.

''I don't particularly see myself as a hod carrier for the single parent/actress mother. I am doing this for me. I am not doing it for anybody else, really. I haven't got advice for everyone, but only for me.''

She uses the adjective ''sorted'' quite a lot to describe anything in her life that she regards as normal, cool, good or healthy. In this respect Tyson, at least to the casual observer, seems herself to be very sorted. She's calmer than a bona fide swami from India. There is also a delightful, natural wigginess about her. Celebrities can be a complicated breed but Cathy Tyson would be right at the top of the list of the most complex actresses. There's a little bit of sweetness, a little bit of rock'n'roll, a little bit of caution: dangerous load.

This might have something to do with the fact that, aged 21, she was thrown in at the deep end. The runaway success of Mona Lisa (she stole the film from its nominal stars, Hoskins and Michael Caine) meant this complete novice, who one major film critic described as having ''a watchable air about her, made visible in her angular bearing'', was forced to handle instant celebrity. Journalists in Britain and America were clamouring to meet her. She usually ended up telling interviewers too much. Her biography at that point was scant.

The daughter of a black barrister from Trinidad and white English social worker mother who later divorced, she dropped out of college aged 17 to pursue acting at Liverpool's Everyman Theatre. After a 1984 production of The Blitz Show, she won admission to the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Born in Kingston-Upon-Thames, she grew up in Toxteth, a model neighbourhood of Liverpool's urban neglect. Reflecting on those times, she says: ''I spoke to journalists constantly. They were coming through one after the other. It was quite a bizarre experience to speak to people who you didn't know about your family: what it was like growing up at home. Whether your parents were separated. It was rather bizarre talking to people like that who you didn't know, 5000 miles way from home. For me there was a kind of catharsis going on.

''If only I had known. There was this responsibility where I just thought, God, I have got to fill their papers. If I look back on it I just think, girl, you don't know all the answers. You try to know all the answers. I kind of felt I was being looked at like a little Dalai Lama's successor. I wished some of the journalists, who were all older than me, had just let me off the hook a little bit. I felt so much pressure to have the answers.''

She paints a bleak picture of being this major new film discovery by day, a lost and lonely little girl in her hotel room by night. ''I can remember arriving in America for the start of a publicity tour, and feeling very grateful for the people who went out of their way to take me out. I am very grateful for that because sometimes, just sitting in a hotel room alone, at 20, in a foreign city, it was a bit lonely. Because you have nobody to share it with. But everyone feels lonely, whether they have got money or not. Whether or not they are being feted. Working with the RSC kind of trained me into that. I had left home at 18 to spend many hours in the theatre understudying people. Sitting there alone, listening to the plays. In a way the experience prepared me for it.''

After her debut in Mona Lisa in 1986, Tyson's film career should have taken off like a bottle rocket. The American critics in particular were in awe of her performance. That year the Los Angeles Film Critics Association voted her Best Actress. She also won a Golden Globe. But the role of Simone was stereotyped. She appeared in several other films which sank without trace. Curiously, it was another prostitute role, many years later in the hugely successful Band of Gold series on ITV, that returned her to the spotlight.

If she has been bothered about the colour of her skin preventing her from getting roles, Tyson is keeping this to herself. She says: ''I hope that people look for something deeper than just the colour of my skin. They usually have. People usually want to know what you can contribute. Lighter-skinned actresses get more work than darker-skinned actresses. That is a fact. But I would like to think that people didn't cast colour-wise; they cast to the qualities that you have. But it is wrong to say that I have not gone in an upward trajectory. Because I have gone upwards inside. With my knowledge. What I have learned. I don't think I would have learned as much if I'd have just gone that Hollywood route. I wouldn't change it for the world. I am not even American. I am British. I love the fact that we don't have guns here as they do en masse over there. I love the fact that we can be miserable

here and still be loved.''

But the love was snuffed out of her marriage to Craig Charles in just five years. By 1989, when they divorced, she was pregnant. She has not had a serious relationship since Charles. She says: ''My priorities are with my son. But I have needs as well. I would like to love an adult, a man. I would like to have mature relationships. But there are all the things that are presumed about actors, and there are a lot of presumptions about us that people have to get through first. It could be not intimidating but off-putting. Wondering what my level of commitment would be, how important they would be to me, that would have to be of paramount importance, that they trust myself - if you think it is about loving someone. Not just somebody to use. Someone to respect, because people thrive when you show your interest in them.

''Of course I am not appealing to everybody. That's a comfort. That's nice to know, that you are not attractive to everybody. And people bringing you down to earth about this, it puts things into perspective.''

Photographers are very attracted to Tyson. The camera loves her. She has looks and figure to die for. Which on one level doesn't particularly please her. ''One of the problems within our society is that you don't see enough different types of women. You look at the magazines and there is only one type. Where are the pregnant women? Where are the older women? Where are the disabled women? We have got to do that. We have to face reality. Reality is beautiful as well.''

Hang on a minute. This is the age where ''Sisters are doing it for themselves'', ably illustrated in Perfect, the new two-part drama starring Tyson and Michelle Collins. In it Collins plays a polygamist - a serial bride with three concurrent marriages and unwitting husbands - and Tyson plays Marie, her friend and confidante. Tyson, well known for her feminist views, was attracted to the story by the ''clever writing'' of Susan Oudot, renowned for pro-feminist TV dramas such as Real Women.

Tyson says: ''I'd like to think of myself as a humanist as well as a feminist. Women's rights interest me. I don't like bullying women. I don't like bullies of any sort - male or female. If anything, men are more threatened by women who do it rather quietly.'' She cites as one of her role models Nicola Horlick, the City fund manager who in 1997 became famous as the woman who who ''had it all'': a #1m salary, a #2.5m mansion in Kensington, and five kids.

''A friend of mine, she has worked with young single parents who are depressed. I thought, mmm, why are they depressed because if they have got a baby then there is hope. She said, yes, but they have had their children before they found out what they wanted to do with their lives. I had my child when I already knew what I was doing. I thought, yes, God, there is such a big difference. When you have children they can completely take over your life, so it is very hard to get back to what you want. And you feel very guilty about trying to get back to what you want.

''Now I am the person who is trying not to have too many expectations in my own life. That is where the major problems are - expectations. As far as happiness is concerned, I am getting there. It is about looking at the areas that create a lot of unhappiness in your life. Finding the roots. I think a lot of the time it can be in our expectations - they can be our expectations of our family, our children. I think I would be a lot happier if I didn't have as many. Because the disappointments you go through can lead to problems.

''My son has got expectations of me too. Rightly so. Even he has got to learn that they can't be too over the top. If too much is thought of me, I collapse. So it is quite good to say to your child, if I don't get this, I know I will just collapse. You must say to yourself - you are not the centre of attention. Even though you were pushed into the centre or the spotlight, like I was. Always remember you are not. Always think of others. Oh, yes - and I would like more children. It is such a long time since I had one now that I can't remember what it was like. I mean - a baby!''

Perfect will be shown on ITV on April 23