Wilton's Music Hall in the heart of the East End is like a window into Dickensian London. The theatre, apparently untouched since Victorian times, is a dusty, ramshackle heap of uneven floorboards and crumbling ceilings, its paintwork peeling like a giant snakeskin.
Meeting Rachael Stirling there one frosty March morning, I am struck by the building's dilapidation. But the 29-year-old actress is adamant that the place is a jewel in the crown of London's theatreland. "It is a beautiful and haunting old building," she says. "Even if the changing rooms are draughty as hell.
"And it's a struggling independent theatre that doesn't charge the earth for tickets. Actually, it reminds me of how the Almeida was before it became so successful."
Wilton's has practically become Stirling's second home. She's just finished playing Yelena, the wife of a gloomy professor, in David Mamet's pared-down version of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, and now she's taking on The Taming of the Shrew, playing the shrew of the title, Katherine.
"It's a delicious part that I absolutely identify with," says Stirling. "Independent, determined, and fiercely so. She vents her frustration through anger, knowing no other way to express it. She's part Miss Piggy and part Tank Girl."
Katherine is Shakespeare's feistiest female by a yard, and the role seems tailor-made for the self-assured young Stirling, who peppers her speech with an array of expletives as she tells me an anecdote about how she scared off a mugger: "This little shitbag on a moped came up on the pavement the other night, grabbed my phone and tried to dash off at 100 miles an hour," she tells me. "Of course, the stupid arsehole dropped it, so I picked it up and shouted abuse at him."
Stirling, who is the daughter of Dame Diana Rigg, shot to fame in Tipping the Velvet. The BBC drama about a lesbian relationship in Victorian times generated predictable tabloid titillation and harassment from the paparazzi annoyed Stirling because, she tells me, she can't be doing with that aspect of our culture. "Celebrity obsession. Not my job," she says. Also, it led to a rather unsavoury fanbase. "One man traced his cock on the back of an envelope and wrote, actual life size'," Stirling tells me.
Throughout Stirling's career, comparisons with her mother have loomed large. That used to rile her, but now she's more than happy to talk about her famous mother, a sixties pin-up girl who starred in The Avengers. "Ma is, after all, an integral part of my life," she says. "And we have this shared profession. It's a real privilege to have someone in your family who does the same thing as you. We offer each other ideas. She'll be in a play and I'll say, you're meant to be an old woman. You looked a bit too agile going up those steps!'"
Stirling has carved out her own acting identity, building a career that offers great promise. So what next? Hollywood? "I don't know. It's a weird place. I did a pilot there and found the whole experience hilariously surreal. Money is no object. It's this star-making and star-fucking machine. But I do love it for its vulgarity."
