Given Helen McCrory’s undisputed talent and gilt-edged acting credentials she ought to be so much more famous than she is. Yes, yes, those highbrow stage roles at The Donmar Warehouse and the Royal Court Theatre do not a celebrity make, any more than the wheelbarrow full of awards and nominations that she has earned for everything from Chekhov to Shakespeare.

But, there again, McCrory has also worked in high profile films like Interview with A Vampire, Charlotte Gray and, more recently, The Queen. In the latter she turned in a spooky facsimile of Cherie Blair, all crick neck and letterbox smile, while bowing obsequiously to Her Maj. “It’s very important to get the physicality of a character right, because it tells us so much about them,” she says.

On top of this, she isn’t averse to a spot of popular TV either; she was the very best thing in dramas like Lucky Jim, Charles II, Anna Karenina, North Square, In a Land of Plenty, Carla and now takes the leading role in a modern version of Frankenstein to be shown on prime time ITV next week.

The latter alone puts her dangerously into red top newspaper and TV listings territory, while her marriage to the actor, Band of Brothers and Forsyte Saga star Damian Lewis could earn her thousands in the celebrity magazine market.

Still, those expecting a colour spread in OK or Hello magazine will be waiting until hell freezes over for the At Home with Helen, Damian, their year old daughter, Manon and their second child, due any day now. For McCrory, it turns out is effectively allergic to fame, suspicious of journalists and uncomfortable with interviews that she likens to “someone rummaging through your knicker drawer.”

“Lots of my friends are journalists,” she says, which seems as likely as a fox declaring that her best buddies are all hounds. “So I know that they’ll go to an interview and say, ‘Oh f***k! I’ve got to stitch them up! I have to write this horrible thing about Gordon Brown because they’ve got pictures of him where he looks satanic and they want me to write the copy that goes with it.’ So you always have to read what’s written about you with your heart in your mouth because it’s all totally subjective.”

No point then in saying to McCrory, when I meet her for coffee at a London hotel, that, in fact, far from stitching her up, my brief today is to discover if she is, as her peers and the critics have started to describe her, The Next Judi Dench. Now aged 39, McCrory, after all, has the accent, the theatrical background, the ability to transform magnificently, to light up a stage or a screen with a special, transcendent kind of energy. She has the gravitas, if not yet the grace, of the Grand Dame herself.

Clearly, however, the comparison is onerous to McCrory, who shuffles uncomfortably and dismisses it out of hand. “The new Judi Dench? Well that’s just a journalistic term isn’t it?” she snorts. “What’s odd is that even when you read nice things about yourself it’s completely confusing. You think, ‘But I’m not like that at all.’"

I am starting to feel sorry for McCrory, even though she thinks my name is Debbie. Though she is testy there is something vulnerable here, too. Perhaps it’s to do with the fact that, when we meet, she sports the neat bulge of a six-month pregnancy. Her alabaster complexion looks awfully pale against her dark brown hair, and there are tell tale dark circles beneath protuberant, greeny-brown eyes.

She is fitting in some publicity for Frankenstein before upping sticks in Tufnell Park and moving (temporarily) to the US to be with Lewis who is filming in LA. Plus, she is coping with the demands of toddler Manon back at home too.

“There is a level of exhaustion that comes with motherhood,” she admits. “And there are times when you feel as though you have completely run out of energy. But, on the plus side, I am the most unneurotic mother you could ever meet. I do find it tiring and hard work, but never, ever stressful.”

She took a year out –- the only time, she says, when she has not worked - to enjoy her first pregnancy and the early months of Manon’s life. “I was just another mum changing nappies and pushing a pram up the Holloway Road,” she says, “which sounds mundane, but, actually wasn’t.”

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