Ask Amanda Barrie how she became an actress and she will tell you that she can barely remember a time when she was not involved in the world of showbusiness.

"Nearly all my childhood memories are to do with being on the stage," she reveals. "My earliest recollection is of being carried through the stage door of a theatre in a pink floral dressing gown, and I spent most of my time performing from the age of three."

The theatre in question from those early days was run by her grandfather, Ernest Broadbent, in Ashton-under-Lyne, and Amanda's first role was that of a fairy on a Christmas tree. "My grandfather and my mother put me in my first play, and they cheated by sneaking in a Christmas carol for me to sing, " she laughs.

Amanda's mother, Connie, was a larger than life character who was always very ambitious for her eldest daughter. "My mother would have liked all of her children to go on stage, but I was the only one who did. I don't think for one minute I would have gone into acting if it hadn't been for her," confesses Amanda.

"She was a very glamorous lady. She took me to dancing lessons and behaved like a real 'stage mum'. On holidays my mother would pack my music, tap shoes and stage costumes and as soon as we arrived she would look up every talent show in Llandudno and put my name down. Even at Christmas, she would always book and aisle seat for the pantomimes, and as soon as they asked for a child on stage I would be booted up there to perform!"

Amanda who was originally christened Shirley Broadbent after Shirley Temple (before being made to change her name by an agent) - divides her childhood memories between the theatre and her recollections of the war. "I spent a lot of my childhood following imaginary German spies around - we all did. When I was about five or six I used to trail round with bits of shrapnel. We had to go to school with gas masks and I hated mine because I was claustrophobic and couldn't put it on. I used to put my bacon sandwiches in it instead, so if I'd ever been caught in an air raid and had been gassed, I would have gone out with a bacon sandwich in my face!

"I spent a lot of time down cellars because of the blitz," she continues. "I had two incredible grandfathers. My mother's father, John Pike, was very artistic and he made the cellar of his house into the South of France. He made a playpit for me with a sand floor and painted all the walls like a seaside scene and he put tables with umbrellas round it and he would dress up and serve us all drinks as the bombs fell outside. He was a tailor, which is where I get my passion for clothes. Had I not become an actress, I might have quite happily been a clothes designer by now."

"My other grandfather was quite a famous local character. He worked on the railways and led the first strike. The bosses were so embarrassed they paid him off with a big golden handshake and he used the money to buy into accountancy, boxing and a theatre. He became an impressario, working with people like the Crazy Gang, and he got all sorts of people established. He was also the Mayor of Ashton and he stood for all three parties: Labour, Conservative and Liberal. He was a real one off and quite well known for his behaviour."

Amanda lived at home until the age of nine. Then, with the war over, and her parents separating, she went to boarding school. "I went to St Anne's college and ended up getting expelled!", she confesses. "In fact I got expelled from all my schools. In retrospect I think my parents' divorce affected me, and also I was dyslexic which wasn't spotted until quite late on. I went from being quite good at school to being bottom - I used to pretend to read and write because I couldn't do it."

"I don't think I was terribly naughty at school - just did a lot of rather silly things, but they were hardly expelling offences. Once I led a strike because I wanted to know why the prefects and teachers could have butter rations at tea-time when we only got margarine - I thought it was rotten, so we all went on hunger strike and refused to eat the bread. I suppose I must have inherited my rebelliousness from my grandad."

When Amanda was 13 she left Ashton for good, going to live at the Theatre Girls Club in Soho. Here she worked for many years as a chorus girl in the West End until her first break came along as an actress. "I always knew I would leave Ashton," she recalls. "I think the theatre was an escape fantasy for me. I was brought up with a lot of theatrical people and it was what I decided to do."

"My father, Hubert Broadbent, was an accountant. He was very funny but he was a complete conformist. Everything he wanted me to do, which was academic, I messed up. I couldn't spell, couldn't write, and I got expelled from school. He was secretly proud of me but he couldn't understand my going on stage. Even when I was a leading lady in the West End he wanted to know when I was going to take 'a proper job'. He thought I would have been much better off taking a secretarial course!"

Although living in Soho at such an early age may sound extremely dangerous today, Amanda insists that she was quite sheltered. "No 13 year old could survive in London these days, but I was very well protected," she explains. "A wonderful woman called Miss Bell who ran the Theatre Girls Club looked after us, and all the local prostitutes would look out for us and make sure we got home safely. There was a whole different atmosphere then - I think people stuck together more because of the war."

Amanda also remained close to her mother, despite living so far away. "She used to come trolling down to London to stay with me and get me in all sorts of trouble. I had a very muddled childhood so I wasn't close to my brother and sister until I was much older because we spent time in different places. Christopher is seven years younger than me and Caroline is 16 years younger so I had long since left home when she arrived. My mother and I were more like sisters."

"I always spent a lot of time with adults. I was my mother's closest confidante after my parent's divorce and I think I missed a lot of my childhood as a result. I remember asking my old headmistress what I was like as a child, and she said, 'You were never a child, Amanda.' I think that is probably true; I grew up very fast after the age of seven or eight."

"My mother always had a vision for me, though. She wanted me to have a more adventurous life than she had herself and I doubt I would have made it without her. She was a lifelong fan of Coronation Street and was thrilled when I first appeared in it for a few episodes many years ago."

"Sadly, she died a few months before I became a regular character, but in a way I think she knows about it. I'm sure she went straight up to the big casting agent in the sky and fixed it for me. If she could have seen me marrying Mike Baldwin on-screen, it would have absolutely made her life!"

next