So far, Antonia Campbell Hughes has been a singer in a punk band, a model, a fashion designer, showing in Paris with a line at Topshop, the muse for a French clothing label and an actor in sitcoms such as Lead Balloon and The Life and Times of Vivienne Vyle, as well as gritty Neil Jordan films and plays about serial killers. She’s just recordedvocals for a Babyshambles track. She is 25 years old.

“You know that horrible thing in Dazed and Confused about the slashers – model-slash-actress-slash-whatever,” she grimaces. “I never wanted to be one of those. It’s like being a society brat. But I really can’t see why you should have to limit yourself to one outlet. I see myself as more...” She pauses and cringes slightly. “Renaissance? That sounds awful, doesn’t it? But it’s true.”

Right now, she’s being a bit slasher/renaissance/whatever. We meet at a photographer’s studio, where she’s doing a glamour shoot for a glossy Irish magazine. When she first appears to say hello, she’s wearing a sparkly gold dress, full make-up and high heels. A few minutes later, she’s back for the interview in a baggy grey hoodie and black jeans, looking almost like the character she’s here to talk about, Sam, the scene-stealing daughter from Jack Dee’s sleeper hit sitcom, Lead Balloon. Dee created, co-wrote and stars in the series about a cynical, misanthropic comic called Rick Spleen, whose inability to function at a normal social level – and parallel burning desire for fame – leads him into humiliating scrapes.

There have been the inevitable comparisons with Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, but that hasn’t hurt the viewing figures. The series debuted on BBC4 in 2006, pulling in the channel’s highest ratings, and was rapidly pushed onto BBC2. Series two started this week, and Campbell Hughes’s sulky-teenager role has been expanded, giving her a more malicious and manipulative edge. In series one, Sam drifted from room to room like a feckless adolescent succubus, draining energy from all around her, unless briefly lightening up to console her father over another one of his scrapes. In series two, she is up to far more mischief, usually managing to persuade dad to part with £50 – the same amount in every episode – for, among other things, sandwiches and her boyfriend’s campaign to be president of the student union. When Spleen is japed by a hidden-camera show, she’s astounded he was too dim to spot the trick.

“Sam wasn’t originally so underhanded, but now there’s a badness to her that I like,” she smiles gleefully. “She’s a brat – not a typical daddy’s little princess, but she knows dads always want to be a part of their daughters’ lives, and she knows that gives her power. When I first started acting full time, I was a bit scared of doing television – I grew up with David Lynch and Christiane F, so I wanted to do nasty, gritty, dark films. But I was surprised to find British comedy is different. It’s black and cynical, and I like that.”

Her surprise is forgivable. Born in Northern Ireland, Campbell Hughes left when she was two and spent her childhood moving from Geneva to Delaware to Germany, then to Ireland, as her father globetrotted for the chemicals giant DuPont. The only British television she saw was Blackadder and Prime Suspect, which is why she’s a fan of Miranda Richardson and Helen Mirren. “It was a real luxury to be able to move around like that,” she says. “I went to international schools, and I’d be the only native English-speaking person in my class. It did make me into a bit of a loner, though. In Germany, we lived beside a huge forest on a hill. I’d ride my BMX to bird-watching towers, smoke cigarettes and listen to the Cure.”

As she perches on a sofa in the studio’s dressing room, it’s hard to see the aimless, gawky loner she still feels makes up her core. She’s pretty, smart and funny, with a dry, understated wit and a lively smile that she flashes with frequent mischief. Even so, experimenting with Teutonic gloom has done her career nothing but good. Her gothic tastes led her to sing in punk bands, then to art school and New York, as an intern for DKNY. She hated it – she based her sulky runner character in Vivienne Vyle on her own miserable insolence – but it gave her the inspiration to start designing.

Sadly, this turned out to be a less than enjoyable experience. “I saw it as an art form, creating a fantasy world, but it became a business, and it was ruined for me.” She clenches the sleeves of her sweatshirt and wraps her arms around her body. “I had collections of clothing I thought told a story, but buyers would prance along talking about how it made their cleavage look, and I’d want to vomit. I’d always acted in short films and commercials, and I’d never been as happy in my life, so one day I decided to stop designing and do acting full time.”

She snagged Lead Balloon through a straightforward audition in her first six months in the UK, which led to Vyle – “There’s not that many young women in comedy,” she shrugs – and now she’s heading into the gritty films she always wanted. She played a stripper in Jordan’s Breakfast on Pluto; Shelter, in which she plays a junkie, starts filming in the new year; and she’s lined up for a political feature about an American girl moving to London.

Her next move is – obviously – writing. After a short run in a play called Roberto Zucco in Dublin this summer, she became fascinated by her character, the girlfriend of France’s best-known serial killer. “She was very young and from a very controlling family, so she became completely obsessed with Zucco, in spite of all he did,” she explains eagerly. “He was an escape route for her. I began writing something, but then I had this idea for a sitcom about restaurant critics ...” A sitcom? She sees my face and gives a self-deprecating grimace. “People are, like, make up your mind what you’re doing,” she shrugs. “But working with Jennifer Saunders and Jack Dee – they let you improvise stuff and suggest things, and they liked what I did, so I thought maybe I could write if I wanted to.” She pauses. “Plus, I had a month off, and the truth is, I don’t like sitting around doing nothing. I don’t like it at all.”

Lead Balloon is on BBC2 on Thursdays at 9.30pm

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