TWO of the best North-East actors over the past two decades have been Charlie Hardwick and Trevor Fox and both finally made the commercial breakthrough after a spell in Emmerdale. In Hardwick’s case, the “spell” lasted 12 years with her popular Geordie character Val Pollard due to exit later this year at the actor’s insistence.

Fox’s short appearance in the soap heralded a run of major theatre roles including The Pitman Painters.

“I walked around London’s Southbank to The Globe where Trevor is currently rehearsing Measure For Measure,” says Hardwick. “We had a cup of coffee and were talking, plotting and scheming to do something in the near future.”

The pair will have to wait because although Hardwick admits her resignation from Emmerdale was down to the exhaustion of constant commuting, she has somehow been persuaded by producer Michael Harrison to star in his 11th pantomime, Dick Whittington, at Newcastle Theatre Royal.

Hardwick has been through the wringer as Val, having contracted HIV. She’s on record as hoping that Val’s exit won’t be down to the disease, but can’t officially say any more about the script.

“I was up for the challenge because it was why I went into acting in the first place. I loved to do the plays at The Crucible in Sheffield and it was just when HIV and Aids was becoming apparent in the 1980s. We took the play around the schools and I was teaching young girls how to practice safe sex and it was good for me to do the same again for older woman, while trying to get rid of some of the prejudice concerning HIV,” she says.

The farewell scenes were about to be filmed, and she is due to leave the Leeds-based studios around now. “The TV audiences will see my exit about six weeks later. I haven’t had any promises that my departure won’t be linked to HIV. That’s one of the things you realise when you take the job on is that your ‘life’ is in their hands. Your progress, happiness and sadness are all outside your influence. They will decide how they cut it and who knows what they’ll bring me,” Hardwick says.

Does she want Val to have no way back?

“When I went up to see the producer, I didn’t want to say that I wanted six months off, because that would be an option. What the future holds I don’t know, but whether this means a clean slate for me only the TV company can decide,” she replies.

Hardwick confesses that panto was the last thing on her mind when she asked for the all-important meeting about her TV contract.

“I was absolutely shattered at that time and just knew I had to go home (Newcastle). It was time to stop this mad commute and when I was asked if there was anything they could do to change my mind I said, ‘Could you move everything to Newcastle?’

“Michael Harrison is from Wallsend and he’s a friend of a nephew of mine and he got a message to me that I’d be able to sleep in my own bed if I took on the role of Spirit of the Tyne and be three minutes from work rather than 100 miles away. To be working in the centre of Newcastle, at the Theatre Royal was a big incentive,” says the actress, who appeared there for The Cooking With Elvis tour and Shooting the Legend by Alan Plater.

Until now, Hardwick has been the other side of the lights each year in the panto audience.

“I know it’s good and the production values are so high. Father and son act Clive Webb and Danny Adams are so good. But it’s going to be 12 shows a week and I did look at that and think, ‘What am I doing?’ But it does mean that the family can pop in and see me any time and I can nip out during a break and do my Christmas shopping and enjoy my one day off on Christmas Day,” she jokes.

“When I had a bit of a think about Michael’s job offer I thought it would allow me to have holiday and then start plotting and scheming in the New Year because I have no idea what I want to do next.”

Asked for the highs and lows of Val, Hardwick says: “Getting HIV is hardly a high, but it has been an education for the nation. I think that people are a bit more savvy, but I’ve also been in a triangle with Liz and involving Billy the murderer and then a whole lot of stuff with Eric. I think I’ve been very fortunate in the plots involving Val, and the producer said she knew I could handle drama and comedy in equal measures. I recall falling out of van semi-clad with Eric in the early days and I don’t think I could do that now without giving myself an injury. Chris (Chittell) who plays Eric is such a decent bloke to work with. I did go and see him before I saw the producer and he gave me a cuddle,” Hardwick says.

On the subject of big breaks, the woman who read the part of Billy Elliot’s granny back in the late-1990s at Live Theatre, way before the film’s release in 2000, says: “I didn’t go into the industry seeking big-time fame. I just went in because I fell in love with drama, theatre, words and giving people the opportunity to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. I hated being out of work, but I was surprised to get a call asking me to audition for Mary Dingle, who was coming back into Emmerdale. I pulled out if it because I didn’t want to get subsumed by television when I still had theatre to do.

“When the call came several years I thought I was ready and I thought three months in soap would set me up nicely... and I woke up and it was 12 years later.”

* Dick Whittington, Newcastle Theatre Royal, Tuesday, November 24 to Sunday, January 17. Box Office: 08448-112121 or theatreroyal.co.uk