FOR a time, actress Sophie Ward was the most famous "out" lesbian in Britain. When the married mother-of-two turned up with her partner at the premiere of the film Evita, photographs of them knocked its star Madonna off the front pages.

That the daughter of actor Simon Ward had played a housewife who leaves her husband for another woman in the TV movie A Village Affair added a little extra twist to the story for the tabloids.

Eight years on, Ward has married her American girlfriend and expresses no regrets about coming out. Didn't she make life difficult for herself by being so public about something so private?, I suggest.

Not at all, she replies. It would have been more difficult not coming out and suffering the gossip and the rumours. She sees no point in dwelling on whether it made any difference to her career.

"I completely bury my head in the sand about it," she says, during a break from rehearsals for the new play Electricity at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds. "I don't think it's helpful to think, 'I would have got that part if I hadn't come out'. I try to get on with the things I am going to do."

She and Rena are legally married in America, but not over here. Civil recognition of gay relationships is a step in the right direction, she says, and couples can register their relationship.

Ward is pleased to be back in Yorkshire, where she filmed Wuthering Heights. That was the only time she has appeared with her father, although she spent time with him there when he was playing vet James Herriot in the film of All Creatures Great And Small.

She was ten when she first attended acting classes, although her parents didn't encourage her. "They weren't keen on me becoming an actor, but I lived in a part of London where there were classes run by Anna Sher," she recalls.

"Much to my parents' chagrin, I started to get work. They were not keen on me taking time off school, although they let me get on with it. In terms of a wider context, I was not very aware of the acting business."

By the time came to take her A-level exams, she knew acting "was definitely something I wanted to do". She'd already been "chucked out" of ballet school for being too tall, so the career she thought she might pursue was no longer possible. "I was devastated at the time. Nowadays there are some wonderfully tall ballerinas," she says.

She modelled as a teenager, between the ages of 15 and 18, before film roles came along. "I pretty much just stopped modelling. Maybe it's different now, at the time it was not compatible with acting - and I felt very passionate about wanting to do that," she says. "I never really did modelling full-time because I was at school. It's nice and glamorous and lots of travelling."

Although her parents didn't encourage her, they did offer practical advice along the lines of "keep your feet on the ground and make sure you're professional about what you do".

When, at 19, she was cast in the Steven Spielberg produced film Young Sherlock Holmes, her acting career was well and truly launched.

She's unsure how she'd feel if her own children, Nathaniel and Joshua, wanted to follow in her acting footsteps. The oldest Nat shows no sign of wanting to act, but she's "not so sure" about his younger brother Joshua.

"It's a little bit of a relief that neither are really interested yet. I can understand my father's point of view now," she says.

Many actors don't want their children to do the same as them, which she finds odd on reflection. "It's strange we don't encourage our children because I love it," says Ward. "If they were really keen I wouldn't stop them doing anything, but would certainly like them to look around at other choices rather than feel it's inevitable."

She has spent time in America, working on films and TV pilots, and expects to be there more once her children have finished school. Stage, rather than movies, concerns her at the moment.

In Murray Gold's play Electricity, she plays Katharine, a woman taking action to get builders to finish work on her home. Christopher Eccleston, who's been named as the new Doctor Who, and Andrew Scarborough also feature in the cast.

"She's very human, you recognise her very easily," she says of her character. "Because her mother has died, she's in a very vulnerable condition. Another reason is her basic repression. She's a nice, middle class girl longing to break out, but not quite able to."

As she started as a child in TV and film, people were reluctant to give Ward a chance on stage until she was cast in Terence Rattigan's wartime play Flare Path at a London pub theatre. "It was right for me, a small theatre, so it was like acting in front of an audience about the same size as a film crew," she says.

Then director Philip Prowse, at Glasgow Citizens, "took a big risk and started giving me parts in classical plays". Most recently, she appeared at the theatre in a new play and a Restoration tragedy, Venice Preserved.

l Electricity runs at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until April 24. Tickets 0113-213 7700.