The Bill

10 September, 1994 | By Steve Clark

She made her name in gentle comedies such as Rings On Their Fingers and Foxy Lady. Now Diane Keen has some serious toughening up to do.

In Friday’s episode of The Bill she plays Janet Hurst, a no-nonsense businesswoman who calls the police when she and her husband find a young woman trespassing in their garden.

When the woman claims to be Janet’s long-lost daughter it really stirs things up. “Janet is totally phased by that,” says Diane. “Although she had a child long before she married her husband, she had never told him. “So this totally unbalances her life - even though she knows the girl is not her daughter.”

Diane found it a demanding part to play. “Janet Hurst comes from a fairly poor Essex background and didn’t have very much going for her. She has hauled herself up and married quite well. It’s a contrast for me in that she’s not the normal character people associate me with, which is either comedy or a softer type of role.”

Not that she isn’t delighted to have got the part - she hopes it will signal the end of a dry spell. “I have no idea why work suddenly became so thin on the ground,” says Diane, 48. “There is talk of actresses hitting a difficult age in their forties but I don’t know what that difficult age is and where it starts and ends. “Everybody has their time when they are in vogue and then that seems to fade off.”

Now things are looking up. Diane’s about to film an episode of the BBC comedy The Detectives with Jasper Carrott and Robert Powell, in which she’ll play a vamp called Madame X.

© The Mirror, 1994