Twiggy Lawson - The Official Site

So what image do you conjure up when the name "Twiggy" is mentioned?

Is it the waif-like teenage supermodel who became one of the defining faces of the 1960s? The successful vocalist who has sung on dozens of hit records? Or the accomplished actress who has starred in numerous film, television and stage productions? If there is one thing Twiggy cannot be accused of in her 35-year showbusiness career, it is failing to turn her hand to new challenges.

And even her ill-fated stint as a presenter on ITV1's flagship daytime show This Morning saw her grab the headlines - albeit for all the wrong reasons.

Now going by her full name Twiggy Lawson, the 53-year-old is fighting back with an eye-catching performance in the Peter Hall-directed production of Mrs Warren's Profession, which appears at the Regent Theatre later this month.

It is a return to the medium that has served her best over the years, in which she has claimed a clutch of awards and plaudits, including two Golden Globe gongs for her debut film, Ken Russell musical The Boyfriend, and a Tony Award nomination for the Broadway play My One And Only.

Twiggy plays the title role in the George Bernard Shaw classic, a morality play addressing sexual liberation, hypocrisy and self-delusion, which was banned for the first 25 years of the 20th century.

So far the production, which is touring provincial theatres across the UK, has garnered favourable reviews - and Twiggy places the experience of working with the renowned Hall among her career highlights.

She said: "This is a real classic and the chance to play the title role in one of Shaw's finest plays is one that no actress would turn down. Every actress wants this role, but they can't have it because I've got it.

"Also I don't think many people would knock back the opportunity to work with Peter Hall. I have almost worked with Peter before because we are friends and he has approached me in the past, but I was never able to because of other commitments.

"It's a great role to play, something you can really get your teeth into. She is a wonderful character."

Mrs Warren is a charming Victorian-era brothel madam whose income from the world's oldest profession allows her to keep her feisty, Cambridge-educated daughter Vivie (Hannah Yelland) in the privileged surroundings to which she has become accustomed.

It is a very different part to anything Twiggy has ever played before, but she says she was able to draw on her experience of playing another Shaw heroine - Eliza Doolittle in a highly-acclaimed TV production of Pygmalion.

She said: "There are elements of Eliza in Mrs Warren as they were both women from the wrong side of the tracks.

"Both plays were about the immorality and double standards of the British class system, which is what Shaw wrote best. In Mrs Warren's Profession, it is made clear that although it was fine for Victorian men to visit prostitutes and many of them did, it was not an acceptable job for a woman to do."

After her stunning debut in The Boyfriend at the tender age of 20 led to her abandoning the world of modelling, Twiggy has worked almost constantly on both sides of the Atlantic.

She said: "Variety is the spice of life, as they say, and I'm quite lucky because I do lots of different things, both here and in the USA, where they are lovely to Brits.

"People often say to me, 'what have you been doing, we've not seen you for a while'. It's usually because I've been working in the USA. People think I've dropped into the North Sea. If you are in an international film, everyone knows. But if you are doing a stage play in New York, there is no reason why people in Britain would know."

But despite her busy workload on the other side of the Atlantic, Twiggy has no plans to try and re-launch herself into Hollywood's consciousness.

She said: "The thought of going back to Hollywood is right down my list of priorities. One has to be realistic, especially in Hollywood. Every woman over the age of 35 bemoans the fact that Hollywood does not cast women over a certain age.

"I'm happy doing what I'm doing and I adore working on stage. When I first did it, it was so terrifying. But there is nothing quite like a live audience.

"Filming can be very boring. You can stand around for hours, and it's long days and early starts for maybe two minutes of film a day. At least with a play, you have an audience and create a character every day."

So what of her experiences in daytime TV presenting, which saw her branded "inert" and "insensitive" by the tabloids and eventually depart just four weeks into her three-month contract?

Twiggy seems unconcerned by the desperately bad publicity she received, blaming it on the very British tradition of building up a celebrity, only to knock them down.

She said: "The good old British tabloids, bless them, chose to really go for my throat. When the woman who ran daytime television at that time left, the papers didn't write about it because she was not newsworthy. I bore the brunt of it.

"At the same time, I was doing a successful Sunday afternoon show, a nice little chat show that did really well and gave me the chance to interview people like Dustin Hoffman and Lauren Bacall. That was never mentioned by the press.

"As everyone in our business knows, Britain is the only country that treats its celebrities like that and I find it quite disturbing.

"But I've been involved in showbusiness for 35 years so I'm certainly not going to let it worry me."

Mrs Warren's Profession: Regent Theatre, Hanley, Monday June 23 to Saturday June 28.