Actress Lisa Maxwell feels at home as part of the cast of one of our favourite police dramas, she tells Steve Pratt.

LISA Maxwell made her name as a TV comedienne and impressionist, appearing alongside Les Dennis and Russ Abbot before headlining her own primetime BBC show.

Now she's arrived in Sun Hill as a regular cast member of ITV's The Bill - and the former funny girl is deadly serious as Acting Detective Inspector Sarah-Jane Maddox.

Lisa Maxwell's stage career began as a child at London's Italia Conte Stage School where her classmates included Bonnie Langford and Lena Zavaroni. She made her TV debut at the age of 11, appearing two years later in the West End production of the musical Annie.

The Bill follows a role in BBC1's crime drama In Deep. Before that she took a break from acting to spend time with her daughter, now two-and-a-half. "I stopped working when I fell pregnant and then looked after her for 18 months. I didn't care about the business that much."

Working on In Deep gave her the acting bug again. "I thought, 'I really like doing this' and it was the kind of work I've wanted to do since I can remember," she says. "I've done a lot of mainstream comedy stuff which, after a while, you can do with your eyes closed."

In her 20s, after starring in her own show on BBC1, she went to America. She lost out on the role of Daphne Moon in hit sit-com Frasier but was signed to star in her own US comedy series.

"It was totally surreal. I was given money, car and apartment and was going to meetings every day in the Lucille Ball bungalow on the Paramount lot," she recalls. "Everything happened in such a mad way. I was there for three years. They wrote and developed four sit-coms for me, but nothing was picked up. I was under contract and always waiting for a meeting. On my 30th birthday I put the phone down after speaking to my mother and cried my eyes out.

"There are people who are focused and single-minded about achieving their goals. I'm not. The good thing is I found out what I need to do to make me happy. There's nothing better than having the person you love and respect, love you back, and having a baby."

Maxwell, 38, put her career on hold after meeting partner Paul, an interior designer, and getting pregnant.

She admits she wasn't happy in America. "I got very low and to the stage where I thought, 'why am I doing this?'. I didn't love my job enough to put myself through it any more. I came home wanting to be in this business but on my terms and territory, with my friends around me.

"Now I'm doing the work I want to do. It's great because I can grow up, play strong women and characters my own age."

The Bill: ITV, Wednesday and Thursday, 8pm.