Jenny Platt on breaking out of her happy little rut

It's just over a year since Jenny Platt's character Violet Wilson drove away from Coronation Street with Jamie Baldwin and new baby Dylan. Jenny is about to appear on stage in her home town of Ipswich in a new play called Chimps, and there's a really interesting interview with her here.

She says that, in many ways, she misses Coronation Street, but she still sees a lot of the cast and crew socially and still lives in Manchester. For her, it was the right time to move on. "I loved being in Corrie, it was a very cosy, very happy environment," she says. "I could feel myself settling into a very comfortable little rut. I had been in the series for three years but I felt that, as tempting as it was to stay; professionally I was missing something. Being in a series like Coronation Street is...

a full-time commitment - you live, eat, breathe Coronation Street. There's no time to do anything else."

She thinks that working in soaps is a great training ground for young actors: "You have The Bill, Holby City, Casualty... all your soaps and there is no time to mess around. No long rehearsal period, you have to learn your lines, remember your moves and get on with it. In many ways it is very similar to what rep used to be." Jenny is a firm believer in people working hard for their success, and doesn't like the easy route to fame offered by shows like Big Brother. "There was a time when fame used to be a by-product of actually being good at something. Now I find that when I meet youngsters who want to be actors, they say to me they want to do it because they want to be famous," she says. She used to avoid the showbiz side of being on Corrie and wasn't the sort to be seen in the tabloids. "I said right from the beginning that I would do anything necessary to promote the programme because that's part of the job but I wouldn't accept any paid interviews about my private life."

Jenny is appearing in Chimps until 16 May. For information and tickets click here.