Since leaving BBC1's EastEnders, Lucy Speed has found herself a new job - as a cinema usherette. She deserves some happiness after playing Natalie and marrying the most boring man in soap, Barry Evans, in the Albert Square drama.

So you'll see her in a nice uniform, carrying a torch and showing cinemagoers to their seats in the Rex cinema in a forthcoming episode of the 1950s-set detective drama, Jericho, on ITV1.

When we meet it's in the Rex cinema in London but not, confusingly, the Rex cinema where filming took place. "That was a listed building in Gravesend. The most ornate, beautiful place. It was sitting derelict but was perfect for this 1950s cinema," she explains.

Life after EastEnders can be hard for an actor but Speed, having been performing since she was eight, was prepared for the difficulties ahead.

"I knew what to expect. It's always difficult, you have to let people forget. It depends whether you want to be a celebrity or an actor. If you want to be an actor, anonymity is not a bad thing," says the actress.

"Because of my career before EastEnders, I had a lot of friends and directors who knew I could do different things to Natalie. Success to me is just being able to work.

"Being a child actor, you let other people decide for you. When you're older, the worst part is being in control of your career. It's much less about celebrity and more about being an actress."

In The Hollow Men, the final episode of the Jericho series, she plays Bette, an usherette at the Rex, where a courting couple were seen the night before their brutal murder in Battersea Park. James Wilby plays the cinema manager, a man with an unhealthy interest in attractive young girls and usherette Bette.

"I wear a lot of eye make-up and have a perm. She has big blonde hair and green eye shadow," says Speed. "It was really good fun to do and quite a nice character to play. She's all eyebrows and sees herself as some sort of movie goddess. I had to wear a customised usherette's uniform, so we had fun with that.

"Her crime is more promiscuity than anything else. She's protecting the person she's in love with. She's an adornment to the crime rather than the murderer."

She's done period roles, including the Oscar-winning movie Shakespeare In Love, before but wasn't keen on wearing a corset again. "Getting up to film at six in the morning is fine but is tough enough without having to be pushed into a corset. In Jericho, I got to wear a really push-up bra rather than a corset," she says.

Speed has fitted in quite a lot of work in the year since she quit EastEnders for the second time. She had plenty of acting experience before she moved to Walford.

But it was "quite a tough decision" to decide to leave the soap. As for a return, she doesn't think so. "At the moment, I don't know where Natalie would fit in to the story, and I've enjoyed the different stuff I've done. I'm in that mindset now."

The hours are more social away from the Square world. "I saw some of the cast the other day and they said, 'you look perky' and I said, 'that's because I get to sleep in in the morning'."

She went directly from EastEnders to Holby City as a woman pregnant with quads and then appeared in The Vagina Monologues, both on tour and in London's West End. In the latter she had plenty of chance to show off her talent in a whole series of characters, including an elderly New York Jewish woman and a dominatrix. She also starred in a radio play, Speed and Silver in which, confusingly, she played Silver.

Not being embroiled in the six-days-a-week schedule of making a soap leaves Speed time to pursue her interests. "I ride my horse and muck her out, that sort of stuff. That pace of life is lovely because most of my life has been working, although working isn't a chore to me," she says. "I'm happy to be in front of 1,500 people with just me speaking. The only time I'm quite shy of an audience is when I'm on my horse."

She gets recognised by the public, although not always because of Natalie. "You see people looking and they say, 'do you know Fran the butcher in Croydon?'. Sometimes you get someone who's only seen the back of your head and how they know it's you, I don't know," she says.

"I've been recognised in America and Prague. And on a plane - I thought it was because of EastEnders and they were saying it was a film in which I played a 1990s punk.

"And once someone asked me, 'are you that girl in Coronation Street?'. I just said yes."

* Jericho continues tomorrow on ITV1 at 9pm. The Hollow Men, the episode featuring Lucy Speed, is being shown on November 4.