Horror role for wife-from-hell

1:20pm Thursday 6th September 2007

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A Penwortham actress is hoping that playing the role of wife-from-hell could lead to stardom.

Part-time secretary Michelle Cornwell, 29, of Cherry Wood, is to play serial husband-killer Lady Almira Devlin - also known as The Black Widow Bride - in a Hallowe'en show, Ghost Encounter Live, at Bygone Times in Eccleston near Chorley.

She impressed casting judges from production company AtmosFEAR, including TV presenter Jason Karl, with her act which included a white lab coat, fake blood and a bag of offal!

Michelle said: "We had come up with our own piece where the only stipulation was that you had to make the panel feel scared without touching them or turning the light off.

"So I came up with this schizophrenic scientist who made a body out of the body parts of people she had murdered.

"The body was being made for the voices in her head which told her she was the last piece of the jigsaw.

"For the ending I ripped open this bag of offal which I had covered in fake blood to make it look like my insides. It was quite difficult coming up with the concept but the panel obviously liked it."

Ghost Encounter Live, which runs for 13 nights from October 20 to November 2, is the longest run that Michelle, who attends the Mel@Drama school in Preston, has done although she does have plenty of acting experience having starred on stage and on screen.

She said: "It is certainly very challenging for me to do this kind of theatre because with horror theatre it is very physical as opposed to emotional." Once the show at Bygone Times is over, Michelle says she hopes to continue her stage career and maybe even pick up an agent to propel her to stardom.

And she has plenty of support from her husband Ian, a design engineer, and children Matthew, 5, and Molly who is 10 months old.

She said: "I would love to do acting full time and hopefully this production could lead to me doing more with AtmosFEAR. But I will continue doing local stage work and then hopefully that will lead to a manager and then some more paid work."

For more information on Ghost Encounter Live, call 01257 451889.