Emma pulls it off!

Emma, 23, now acts under her stage name of Emma Stansfield (screen actress Emma Thompson, former wife of Kenneth Branagh, already uses that name professionally). The drama graduate from Much Birch beat off stiff competition from other actresses to land the part of Daisy's friend, Alice Fitzpatrick - the sporting type who befriends lonely Daisy.

Emma has always wanted to act since the age of three, after playing the Angel Gabriel in a nativity play, and by the age of 12 she was taking on the leading role of Oliver Twist in Monmouth Comprehensive School's production of Oliver.

At Hereford Sixth Form College she continued her acting career by taking on the role of Cherry Barnum in Barnum.

Emma has landed a few television roles with a small part in a BBC production Gentlemen's Relish staring Billy Connolly, and has appeared in an episode of the daytime TV series, Doctors.

Mum and dad, Colin and Gill Thompson, run an amateur dramatics society and both trained at the same drama school that Emma attended, and have given her support and advice throughout.

Mr Thompson said: "We are delighted at Emma's achievement, for she has worked very hard to achieve her ambition to perform on stage.

"The family have just about seen everything she has done, and have travelled the country to see her perform in her various roles."

In the final weeks of her course at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, Emma found an agent, and in that same week landed a role in the teenage play Sparkleshark.

Emma's success of joining the cast of Daisy Pulls It Off came after four gruelling auditions - one of which was before the show's creator, Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Emma said: "At the initial audition I had to prepare a piece from the 1920s' then the next one I had to learn a piece from the play.

"I came out of the audition thinking that I had done badly and was disappointed. Then my agent called and said I had got the part and then the champagne flowed."

Daisy Pulls It Off was last seen in the West End in the 1980s and is a spoof about a scholarship girl, Daisy, who attends a snobbish girl's college.

The play is set in 1927, and Emma plays the Alice Fitzpatrick, a deputy sports captain and school prefect.

Emma added: "Acting is not a glamorous job, it's hard work. "And when I'm not acting I get a temporary job and teach children. I always keep busy. "I've had friends who have had nothing for two years and then get the contract they have always wanted."

And Emma has a burning ambition to work with the likes of Judy Dench in an historical movie.

She said: "In the future, I would love to do a gritty period drama and some film and television work which is a completely different discipline to work in." Daisy Pulls It Off opens at the Lyric Theatre in London's West End on Monday.