Emily Joyce interview

What made you take the part of Thermoman's exasperated girl?

Well I can safely say it isn't because I was into superheroes as a child! In fact that whole genre never interested me before, and I was always a little miffed that the girlies always need rescuing by the big manly hero.

In seriousness, I was drawn to My Hero because of the wonderful script. I had worked on a sitcom before on Channel 4 called In Exile, so I was already an experienced comedy performer when I was handed the pilot script for My Hero. I thought it was really funny and something I wanted to be a part of.

When did you get the acting bug?

Well I was exposed to the theatre from an early age because my mother would take me and my siblings quite often. So my interested started from there, but it increased when I was a teenager as I realised acting could help me overcome my innate shyness.

I was quite an awkward teen in some respects and didn't find it easy to communicate with people, but when I passed my audition for the National Youth Theatre I was a whole different person – I really opened up, became confident, and realised an acting career was what I wanted.

But is it true you almost became a singer, rather than an actor?

Well, a few years after my awakening at the National Youth Theatre I did join a rock band called In Spite of All That. I was the lead singer and we did actually get our act together, write songs and even play gigs. That lasted for three years, during which time I also went to drama school, and eventually it was crunch-time and I had to decide whether I'd rather be an actor or a singer.

I chose acting, because my heart was just in it and I felt it offered the most scope for a long-lasting career.

You mentioned you'd been in another sitcom before My Hero. Did you always want to get into comedy?

There was no game plan as such – as an actor you see what comes your way, and sort of develop yourself as you go along. Certainly I started off in a serious vein, as I started off with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

And my first big TV break was Cracker, in which I played an unhinged killer with a fetish for electrocuting men – not exactly brimming with laughs! I had roles in other darker shows like Wycliffe and Casualty before the sitcoms came along, but it's all been fantastic.

What was the trickiest part of being in My Hero?

Well Ardal and I are terrible corpsers – that's the thesp term for ruining a scene by giggling. The funny thing is we were very calm and professional during the rehearsals, but come the audience and we're biting our lips not to laugh.

And then of course there was the challenge of acting with babies – never an easy thing. We had two babies playing the same part, as you're not allowed to have a baby "working" for longer than a set time. All of which meant the babies had to be swapped around quite frequently between takes. Still, I have to confess they were well behaved – consummate professionals you might say.