Doing it the Hardway

Three years after landing a role in a high-profile TV drama, Sasha Hardway’s career is finally taking off, she tells Sunil Peck

Sasha Hardway is waiting for a call to tell her if she has edged out another disabled actress and landed a part in a prime-time television soap opera. But she has been sworn to secrecy about which soap it is.

She is trying not to build her hopes up, just in case she does not get the part. Then she laughs in a self-deprecating way, and adds: “But if I get it, they will have made the right decision.”

Sasha is 21. The latest role in her three-year acting career was as Anais in the film Special People. The comedy, about a group of young disabled film-makers, headlined London’s International Disability Film Festival in February and is due for general release this summer.

In the film, Anais is the love interest and is spurned by Dave (Jason Maza) because he does not want a girlfriend who uses a wheelchair. So, I wonder, has the character been influenced by Sasha’s own experiences of love?

“I am not really someone who would go up and say ‘I fancy you’ in real life. I am not really that confident.”

Sasha hadn't had the opportunity to hang out with other disabled young people before she met the cast of Special People on location in the Malvern Hills. There were only three or four other disabled people in her school; one of them was a pushy teacher. Sasha has now become close friends with the cast, and her experiences with them have been a revelation.

“When I met David Proud and Robyn Frampton, it made me realise how unindependent I am in terms of wheeling myself around. I would never have wheeled myself up a massive hill a few years ago. I would always make sure that someone came out to the shop with me to give me a hand.”

Sasha has performed from a young age. She danced before she lost the use of her legs, and sang at school. She joined VisABLE People, an agency for disabled actors and models, as a teenager and secured work as an extra and some modelling shoots. But she was 18 when she landed her first major acting role, as Rachel in Stephen Poliakoff's television drama Friends and Crocodiles.

The experience made her lust for more roles. But when the offers dried up, she soon realised that she could not rely on acting as a career.

“I thought, ‘Great, I have done a high profile film, I will get loads more work.’ But I did not.”

So she decided to study for a degree in graphic design which she is due to complete in June.

She did land a role in an ITV drama as a “bed-ridden tetraplegic”, but her one line failed to made the final cut. She had auditioned for the main character, who was paralysed after a car accident, but lost out to a non-disabled actress. But Sasha does not believe the producers discriminated against her. “I think they wanted the actress to look similar to the real character. She had blonde hair and I don’t.”

Even if she misses out on the soap role, Sasha says the new character could still do a tremendous amount for disability equality; if the scriptwriters come up with strong storylines, the soap’s non-disabled audience will start to see disability as a cool thing. If nothing else, Sasha hopes it will mean that nice guys have fewer qualms about approaching her in nightclubs.

“I always get the strange guys coming up to me. Once I was in a nightclub and a guy came up to me and just grabbed my arms and started moving them to the song Surfing USA. I was so embarrassed. I felt like everybody was looking at me and I didn’t really want to be a puppet. My friend reckons that all the nice guys are too shy to come up to me.”

There were no disabled characters for Sasha to relate to as a young TV viewer. “I like the character in a wheelchair in Balamory, and I think if I was a young kid I would have looked up to her. I would have liked Desperados – about the wheelchair basketball team - too.”

Sasha would consider playing most roles but says she would draw the line at appearing naked. She is not a fan of hidden camera Trigger Happy TV-style roles, either, where her disability could be used as a tool to embarrass unsuspecting members of the public.

“I went for one audition where I went up to someone on the street and I said, ‘Have you seen my pusher?’ It was supposed to be funny.”

It will be a few years until there are any disabled actresses to rival Hollywood stars like Cameron Diaz, but she says scriptwriters and casting directors are slowly coming around to the idea of including more disabled actors. She believes that she would make a good role model for disabled youngsters, too.

“I want to be an actress, but I think that being a figurehead for disabled people comes with that, which I think is important. If there was to be a disabled person for people to look up to, it would be really cool if it was me.”