Golda Rosheuvel cried during the first season of Bridgerton. Not because of the pressure of playing Queen Charlotte in what has become one of Netflix’s biggest shows, but because of something that happened in the hair and make-up chair.

“I remember crying. In the first season, they were talking about using part of my hair in the front to be part of the wig. They were going to use braids and textured hair. I was blown away. I felt seen for the first time as a Black actress, as an actress of colour. And it was a wonderful, pivotal moment in my career.”

It’s a powerful admission from an actress who, at 56, is now one of the most recognisable faces on television. Born in Guyana and raised in Britain from the age of five, Rosheuvel had an extensive theatre career and appeared in television and film including Luther, EastEnders, Lady Macbeth and Dune before becoming internationally famous as Bridgerton’s fabulously bewigged, formidable Queen Charlotte.

When we speak on Zoom, she’s filming the fifth season of Bridgerton. But she’s also taking on another role: ambassador for the British Beauty Council, championing an industry which, for Rosheuvel, has a very personal significance.

The partnering came about through a chance encounter at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. “I was there with my darling mother-in-law and we were invited into the Weleda tent. I met the British Beauty Council and we had an amazing conversation. And the rest is history.

For Rosheuvel, the appeal is the opportunity to champion a much broader definition of beauty. “I’m very open to championing something that I believe in – a broad spectrum of beauty. What beauty is. We’re all different, we all have different skin, hair. So I’m really excited to be involved.”

Her own earliest definition of beauty had little to do with make-up. Growing up, Rosheuvel was a serious sportswoman. “My world was sport. I loved that physical look and being able to play rounders, tennis and hockey for my county, [with the aim to] be on an Olympic team. So beauty as in make-up and hair, that wasn’t even there. “But yet I felt beautiful, empowered,important and worth something. And I suppose that’s kind of what beauty is to people. They feel worth something when they put it on.”

Her experience when she became an actress was very different. Hair and make-up departments, particularly in the theatre where she began her career, simply weren’t equipped for Black performers.

“When I started, there was no understanding of Black skin and Black products. I was the one that had to bring in my hair products to work to use. You just get on with it, don’t you, until somebody says to you, ‘Oh no, we’ve got the product, don’t worry, you don’t have to bring it in.’ Which was on Bridgerton.”

For years she simply accepted whatever make-up artists chose to use. “I didn’t feel that I had a voice,” she tells me. 

Race isn’t the only area in which Rosheuvel thinks the beauty industry could be more inclusive. What would she change about the industry, if she could? “I don’t think they celebrate older women. We could do that a little bit better. I feel sometimes that it’s too geared to the young. Bridgerton really champions the older women. There are some strong, powerful, beautiful older women in this show. Whereas I think we get passed over sometimes in the beauty industry, when you look at all the campaigns and the posters.”

Perhaps surprisingly, given how radically Bridgerton has reimagined the traditional overwhelmingly white period drama, Rosheuvel grew up loving them. Her white British mother was “obsessed” with them – and had her own unlikely brush with royalty. “She had dinner with Princess Margaret once,” Rosheuvel tells me. “In Barbados.”

Her mother’s own approach to beauty was understated: “Lips and a bit of foundation. That’s all she wore. Fabulous. She looked great.”

It was sitting beside her mother watching television that shaped Rosheuvel’s relationship with the period dramas she would eventually help reinvent. “My mum was obsessed with period dramas. That’s what I grew up on: a period drama and a good detective.”

Despite rarely seeing Black people in those programmes, Rosheuvel says she didn’t experience them as something from which she was excluded. “I never felt unseen because my mum, the woman sitting next to me, was white. I had the representation in my house. I had a Black father and a white mother. Of course, I’m not saying that there was representation. There was not. But my experience was one of inclusion. “I enjoyed what my mother was seeing. It wasn’t so much about the colour of people’s skin. It was the scenery. It was the country houses.”