The actor Jenny McCrindle, who has died of multiple sclerosis aged 46, gave one of her finest screen performances in the BBC drugs drama Looking After Jo Jo (1998), Frank Deasy’s four-part story set in the early 1980s. She stood out from the bleakness of a rundown west Edinburgh housing estate, with her dark hair dyed platinum blonde, as the vulnerable, Marilyn Monroe-fixated Lorraine, girlfriend of Robert Carlyle’s petty criminal turned heroin dealer.
After her release from a detention centre, Lorraine plans to adopt her Hollywood alter ego and head for the bright lights of London and a lookalikes agency. “I grew up in homes just like she did,” Lorraine says. “I knew how she felt. Ever since I was little I’ve always loved her and now I’ve got this chance down south.” However, the dream of escaping her grim reality never materialises.
In the same year, McCrindle was in The Acid House (1998), the film version of Irvine Welsh’s book of short stories, in which she played Evelyn, who adds to her boyfriend’s woes by dumping him.
McCrindle was as adept at comedy as powerful drama. The insecurity that she showed in rehearsals was replaced by a remarkable confidence on stage that led her to create unexpected laughs for theatre audiences. During long runs, she would sometimes appear with the wrong wig or a false nose.
She was dyslexic, and one of her greatest achievements was learning lines. Her mechanisms for overcoming the condition included pinning pages of script around her flat while memorising parts. Her promising career was cut short after her diagnosis with MS in 1999, but she remained independent, living in her own home and using a mobility scooter.
McCrindle was born in the Maryhill district of Glasgow, daughter of Libby (nee Robertson), an office worker, and George, an insurance agent. She attended Clydebank high school, where she gained an interest in acting and appeared in plays.
At the age of 15, McCrindle joined the Scottish Youth Theatre. On leaving school a year later, she trained as a hairdresser on a youth opportunities programme. While playing the Artful Dodger in Oliver!, aged 18, she was cast as the school pupil Carole Adams in the film Heavenly Pursuits (1986), starring Tom Conti and Helen Mirren. She then gained her Equity card in pantomime.
McCrindle appeared alongside Harvey Keitel in the BBC play Down Where the Buffalo Go (1988) before landing the lead role in the writer David Kane’s bittersweet comedy Dream Baby. She starred in the 1989 television drama as an 18-year-old girl living on a rundown Edinburgh housing estate and trying to get money out of her two boyfriends, played by Peter Capaldi and Kevin McNally, by pretending to be pregnant. She was later in Kane’s three-part thriller Jute City (1991) and the television film Ruffian Hearts (1995).
There were also guest roles in popular series such as Chancer and Your Cheatin’ Heart (both 1990). In the sitcom pilot Miles Better (1992), McCrindle’s character hides behind a hedge on seeing a policeman, played by a young David Tennant, heading her way. Two of her last roles were in the television version of Simon Donald’s play The Life of Stuff (1997) and the medical drama series Psychos (as staff nurse Sue Hamilton, 1999).
On stage, she played Agnes in the David Kane black farce Dumbstruck at the Tron theatre, Glasgow (1994), where she particularly enjoyed milking laughs in pantomime over the years.
She is survived by her parents and her sister, Joanne.
• Jennifer McCrindle, actor, born 19 September 1968; died 26 October 2014
