Suzy gets her gun

The actress has been given honorary membership of Berwick Kaler's club as one of the performers invited back year after year to appear alongside York's long-time Dame.

She plays principal girl, although not one of those sugar and spice heroines. Especially this year in Jack And The Beanstalk. After complaining on stage during the show - courtesy of Kaler's script - that all she ever does is fall in love with the principal boy and get kidnapped by the bad guy, her Jill becomes a gun-toting, slinky dress-wearing villainess in a big song-and-dance number.

Her York panto debut was a late decision. She received a call from her agent saying someone had dropped out and that they were holding last-minute auditions. She's been at York ever since, apart from last year when filming two episodes of BBC1's Casualty and a commercial kept her away.

"I did miss coming here," she says. "The sad thing is you do a couple of tellys and get the kind of money you get for a whole season in the theatre. But that's not the point. The point of doing panto is the fun and live experience."

Although she trained in musical theatre, the majority of her working career has been in acting. After drama school, she spent a year in the Sky soap Jupiter Moon. Apart from Little Shop Of Horrors, she's never done a musical since. "I would rather be an actress who gets to sing and dance occasionally than a theatrical performer who doesn't get straight roles," she says.

Nothing could prepare her for one of Kaler's pantomimes, which put a fresh spin on the traditional format. Audiences come year after year to hear the repartee between the characters they know and love.

"I remember a lot about the first one I did but this year's is a lot wackier. When I started I didn't realise how much of a success it was already. It's nerve-racking because the audience expect so much."

Inevitably, the show changes during the run and every performance she has to cope with Kaler's ad libs and mock insults. This time he takes the mickey out of her absence last year.

"The worst things that happen are backstage. You think it's crazy on stage but people get covered in foam and water off-stage. I get watered every year, pinned down and sloshed with water," she says. Kaler, along with regulars David Leonard and Martin Barrass, are "terrible wind-up merchants".

She's already shown York audiences her steely side this season as the scheming Marquise de Merteuil in the period drama Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Clearly she read the reviews because she takes me to task - in the nicest possible way - for my criticism of her performance, and justifies the way she chose to play the role. "Not that I've had closure on the role. I want to do it again," she adds.

The autumn season also saw her playing Snout, one of the rude mechanicals, in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. She was pleased few people recognised her after the role gave her sleepless nights. Putting an old Aladdin wig on back to front and blacking out some teeth finally gave her the key to the character.

Before joining the company in August, she made two films. One, Don't Look Back, took ages to finish because of finding funding. Rather oddly, she describes the role of a Southern American woman who gets killed in a car crash as "a nice little comedy part". The other is a short film called Cracks which she co-produced.

Jack And The Beanstalk gives her a rare chance to show off her singing and dancing, the things that first got her interested in the stage. "I did ballet at the age of three and I really wanted to be a ballet dancer - that's ballet, not belly," she says.

"My father has always been a Sinatra fan, so all the old musicals got me into wanting to do musical theatre. That's why I trained in it, but I quickly changed my mind. I went for a few castings as a dancer, starting at the front and ending up in the back row."

l Jack And The Beanstalk continues at York Theatre Royal until February 2. Tickets 01904 623568.