After a tough few years, ex-Coronation Street actress Beverley Callard has emerged stronger and more excitable than ever, as she stars in The Rise and Fall of Little Voice. She stepped out of rehearsals for a natter with Chris Price.

Rehearsals have only just started for The Rise and Fall of Little Voice and, Beverley Callard is as giddy as a teenager.

“Two days ago I met Joe McGann, who is playing my boyfriend Ray Say, and yesterday we were snogging on the sofa,” laughed the former Coronation Street actress, who played Liz McDonald for 22 years.

“I was really shy. I thought ‘oh my goodness I only met this man yesterday but never mind, here we go.’. He’s very good actually.”

Beverley’s joy is all the more deserved considering the rocky road she has travelled to get to this point.

She quit Coronation Street last year to care for her dying mother, who was in the final stages of Alzheimer’s disease, and felt herself slipping back into depression which had caused her a nervous breakdown in 2009.

Forced to pull out of a theatre tour of Hormonal Housewives last year, she and her husband Jon McEwan – a builder from Willesborough, Ashford – could not pay the debts on their collapsed pub business or Beverley’s huge medical bills from three years earlier. The actress was forced to file for bankruptcy in May, just months after her mother died in January.

“Life’s never boring is it?,” she said. “We all tend to be people- pleasers and I’m a workaholic who sometimes does not know when it is time to stop.

“Maybe I have learned not to put quite so much pressure on myself but that was just the way I was brought up. You always worked no matter what.

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“I just had to take those few months to get well but I’m very well now and I was gutted that I couldn’t do Hormonal Housewives. I had to pull out of panto as well. But I was unwell and I didn’t want to start something and let people down. Under doctor’s orders I had to take care of myself for a while but I am well now and on the climb back up again.

“You have just got to do your best and so many people are struggling at this time. When something like that happens to you, you just want to know you are not alone.

“My husband and I talk about it and he was amazing throughout that. I wouldn’t be where I am today without him.”

Supportive as ever, husband Jon will be joining Beverley, 55, for part of her tour in The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, as is their English bull terrier Trevor.

The tour includes a run at Dartford’s Orchard Theatre, which is special for Beverley not just because it’s in the county her husband comes from, but because she performed at the theatre the last time she was on stage in Mum’s Tthe Word, more than a decade ago.

“I can’t wait to get there,” she said. “I had a ball the last time.”

Made famous in the 1998 film starring Jane Horrocks and Michael Caine, The Rise and Fall of Little Voice follows the life of shy Little Voice, played by Jess Robinson and also stars Dancing on Ice favourite Ray Quinn as electrician Billy.

The play by Jim Cartwright – a “genius” in Beverley’s eyes – was already well-known before the film and Jim is directing the show for the first time. He asked Beverley to do the role at the beginning of last year and she accepted without hesitation, as soon as she got better.

“It is the most demanding role and very draining,” she said. “There are only about six pages when she is not on stage but to work with Jim Cartwright is amazing and I know it is going to be a fantastic production.

“It’s an amazing night out and it is incredibly funny.

Mari Hoff [Beverley’s character] is the worst mother in the world. I have really thought about my mum over the last few days because some of the lines I have got to say, my mum would have been horrified at,” she laughed.

“Mari can be quite coarse. My mum would have said ‘oh Beverley you can’t say that.’ Mari is an alcoholic and such a fantastic role to play but also there is a great deal of pain in there for her and I need to get that across, as well as her being incredibly funny.”

It is clear Beverley is in a much happier place today than she was a year ago.

“Very much so and please God may it continue,” she laughed. “I’ve always appreciated things. I have never taken anything for granted. We just all have ups and downs in our lives don’t we?

“I’m so excited about this play – I cannot begin to tell you.”

The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, starring Beverley Callard, runs at Dartford’s Orchard Theatre from Monday, September 17 to Saturday, September 22. Tickets £24.50 to £29.50. Box office 01322 220000.