"This is my first panto," she says. "It was my only panto audition. I just decided that I really wanted to do panto this year."

It's a challenge she's rising to: "It's just so different - so totally different to anything else you could ever do."

And she's picked a good one to start with, one based on solid traditional panto values: "It's all about having an awful lot of fun and keeping the audience involved. You really want to hear what the audience has to say. They are very much part of the story."

Guys become girls, cows have beguiling blinking eyelashes and the girls become guys: "It's lovely, escapist, happy, feel-good, get-away-from-it fun."

And oh so British.

"I have friends from other countries, from the States and from Canada that are totally baffled by the whole concept of panto!"

Libby, whose film credits include Penny (lead) in Cristina Diaz de Bustamante, trained at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts, graduating three years ago, since when things have gone well.

"It's has been interesting - lots of totally different sorts of jobs in between the act, lots of daft day-jobs. I have worked at an arts centre, I have worked in Harrods spraying perfumes, I have worked as an artist's model, fully clothed I hasten to add! I have handed out fliers...."

All to sustain the acting, longing for the day when the acting will sustain everything.

"I have done mostly theatre. Theatre is my passion. I love live performance, doing something from beginning to end every night rather than filming different scenes in a different order."

Tickets for Jack And The Beanstalk at Worthing's Connaught Theatre (Dec 5-Jan 4) are on 01903 206206.