Lorraine Chase talks about her high drama on the road which severed an ear.

HAVING to have an ear re-sewn back on twice, following a car crash, didn't put Lorraine Chase off acting out the thriller plot of Dead Guilty, where she plays the troubled wife of a man who dies at the wheel of his car.

The play, the third part of the Ian Dickens summer season at Darlington's Civic Theatre, sees Lorraine portraying a character very close to that of manipulative and murderous Steph Stokes in TV's Emmerdale. The five-year role, which came to an end in 2006, saw her voted as one of soap's top ten evil women.

"I like Steph very much, which is probably why people liked her. There are people that are wired wrong and she was a bit of a sad case. She was always destined to get in trouble somewhere because of the way she reacts to things. Then it all came out about her background (the abuse she suffered) but I wouldn't say because one has been abused one has excuses for things," she explains.

The offer to play Steph is said to have followed a suggestion from Emmerdale actress Sheree Murphy that Lorraine was the ideal person to play her mother. This idea leaked out before the 55-year-old heard officially and she laughs about friends and family ringing up to tell her the news before an official approach was made to her agent.

"My Aunty Cissy phoned me about it and I said 'I don't think so' and then someone else said about it and I rang my agent who said 'I don't think so' and so it went on. But six months later they asked me to meet Sheree and the rest is history," she laughs.

"At first I agreed to a six-month stint but four-and-a-half years later I decided to leave after the traumatic storylines. Having suffered abuse myself as a child it was very traumatic doing it. So I'd had enough and wanted to do some comedy and went off and did an appearance in My Family (BBC1) which was great fun," Lorraine adds, although she hasn't seen the televised episode because she doesn't have a DVD player on which to watch a recorded version she's been given.

"I'm the world's worst, my technology is dreadful. I've got no computers, no ipods and it all sounds like outer space to me. Well, I'm hoping it will all catch me up and I'll come in on it when we can say 'do this, do that' and you don't have to know any technology."

So does she feel dead guilty about anything? "No I don't think there's anything I feel dead guilty about. I've never knowingly gone out to hurt anyone," she says of her latest character Margaret.

"This is a nice piece, written by Richard Harris, which is a murder mystery where I play a woman who takes over the life of the woman who was sitting next to my husband when he died. She's clearly been in quite an abusive relationship with her husband and then starts to isolate Julia (Clare McGlinn)," says Lorraine, who is enjoying working with ex-Emmerdale stars Gary Turner and Abigail Fisher

"I'd love to do a drama on TV but I do miss the comedies because it very good for me as a person and keeps me light-hearted. Because I haven't had acting lessons I don't have the technique so I really have to get myself ensconced and bring up memories to help me get the feeling for the person I'm playing," Lorraine explains, adding that getting in character is the hardest part of any project for her.

That leads to the question about the road crash and she comments: "I had a very bad road crash which I kept very quiet at the time and I fell 30 feet onto a motorway and half my face was paralysed for six months. It was quite a difficult time. I'm pretty good at bouncing back and I didn't need any counselling. My ear was severed so I had to have that sewn back on when I got to casualty. Unfortunately, it healed up inside so I had to have it taken off and put back on, so I look like I've had a one-sided facelift because I've got scars behind one ear. It didn't knock any sense into me, I'm still daft," says the woman who has forged a 30-year career out of a Campari commercial where she was asked "Were you truly wafted here from paradise?" and responded "Nah, Luton Airport".

"Do you know, I think we should start a campaign for the Lorraine Chase passenger suite at Luton," she jokes.