My space odyssey - Jessica Hynes interview

Is Jessica Hynes, creator of geek hit Spaced, finally back in the saddle? She tells all to ALISTAIR HARKNESS

IT'S OFFICIAL: THE GEEK HAS INherited the earth. Well, in pop culture terms at least. The global box-office is dominated by comic book movies. TV schedules are packed with shows like Lost and Heroes and confirmed fanboys such as JJ Abrams (who created Lost) and Britain's own Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright are Hollywood players. Given the latter pair's meteoric rise, one might wonder why Jessica Hynes – who until last year was better known by her maiden name of Stevenson – isn't also firmly entrenched in this new world order.

After all, it was Hynes who came up with the concept for Spaced, the groundbreaking, pop culture referencing sitcom she co-wrote and starred in with Pegg. More to the point, as Daisy Steiner, wannabe writer, she became a heroine for fanboys and girls everywhere thanks to her embracing of everything from comics and anime to Matrix-style kung-fu and pretend gunplay. She even had a brilliant way of dropping lines from The Empire Strikes Back into conversation.

Yet it was Pegg and Wright (the show's director) who capitalised on its huge cult following, transposing the essence of its appeal to the big screen with their comedies Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. Hynes, meanwhile, has yet to find a comedic role as rich as Daisy.

Take her latest film, Faintheart, this year's Edinburgh Internation-al Film Festival Closing Night Gala. It's a movie that seems custom-made for Hynes's core base of Spaced obsessives. For starters, it's set in the world of battle reenactment clubs, not a million miles from the world of comic book fans, fantasy film addicts and horror movie lovers – all of whom Spaced counted among its followers. Then there's its genesis. Faintheart is the result of a contest run by online social networking phenomenon MySpace to create the first publicly generated movie, with users not only picking which project should be made, but contributing creatively to the final film. In other words, its development has been influenced by the very people most likely to enthuse about all things Spaced on chatroom forums.

You might think, then, that Hynes would be cast in a role that reflected her status. But no – there she is, playing the long-suffering wife of the film's lead character, a lowly store worker (Eddie Marsan), whose love of dressing up as a Viking convinces her to leave him, after he turns up late to her father's funeral in a Viking helmet. It goes without saying that the rest of the film is about him trying to win her back – all well and good, but it would be nice to see Hynes as the heroine in her own story. There was a lauded guest turn in Doctor Who last year – she even got to marry the Time Lord, sort of – but still …

So, why does Hynes always seem to get wife/mother roles rather than parts more in tune with Spaced? "There aren't any out there," she says. "I mean, I love acting and performing, and I love the fact that I wrote and designed Spaced for myself to perform, but I did naively think that afterwards I would get offered more parts like that. Then I realised there weren't any. I'm not complaining. But you have to get out there and write stuff yourself."

Why didn't she do that when Spaced ended in 2001? "To be honest, when the second series of Spaced finished I was quite lost. Simon and Edgar were moving on and wanted to do a film and I think Edgar wanted to write it so that meant they didn't really want me to go along with that. They wanted to write a zombie film, which I would have been very happy to write, but I just think they had ideas about what they wanted to do next and they didn't involve me."

She sounds a little hurt, but it wasn't as if she didn't have offers of her own. In fact she started her own film script, but found it hard to write with no-one to bounce ideas off. By the time she did knock it into shape, her heart wasn't in it any more, even though a production company was willing to give her money to direct it. Instead she drifted into unsatisfying projects such as the shortlived, critically panned sitcom According to Bex.

What made it even worse was the feeling of inadequacy she felt watching Wright and Pegg's success. "I would compare myself and think, 'What have I been doing? I've been walking into walls and they've been doing that?' It was almost like I felt I wasn't doing well enough. I know that's a really negative thing to do but … I mean, you work with people and they go off and do something spectacular in America and you go, 'Hang on, how did that happen?' On the one hand I was really proud of them and amazed and impressed, but it did make me think, 'Oh God, maybe I should be doing that.' "

She's philosophical about it now, though, and reckons there's a time to do things and a time not to. She had her first child four months before she started filming the first series of Spaced (she now has three children), so priorities changed. "I think that's what happens when you have small babies. After the second series, I was sort of building my family, really. Parenting is such a massive thing. When it happens it's like, woah! And then it sort of settles somehow. And as soon as that happened for me, my mind went back to what I wanted to do, which was writing. I mean I was sad things didn't work out and I didn't get to write more with Simon, because I loved writing with Simon. But I think he and Edgar were really keen to get to Hollywood. I'm not so keen; I just want to write something good and get it made."

To this end she has films in development with two production companies: a high-concept comedy and a film about the Suffragettes. Writing both over the last year or two has, she says, made her realise not only what she loves doing, but also what she's (extremely) good at doing: finding characters, breathing life into them and creating an idiosyncratic world for them to exist in. "I was quite young when I started doing this, but I'm ready to do it again. I feel strong."

• Faintheart closes the Edinburgh International Film Festival tonight, Cineworld, 9:30pm and 9:45pm.