Denise Black

Denise Black (born 16 March 1958 in Emsworth, Hampshire, England) is an English actress, best known for playing Denise Osbourne in the ITV1 soap Coronation Street and Hazel Tyler in Channel 4 TV's Queer As Folk in 1999 and 2000, written by Russell T Davies. After attending Portsmouth's Girls Public Day School, she studied Psychology at London University. She had taken a number of jobs, including working in a local psychiatric care home. After graduating, she started travelling to Gibraltar and later the West Indies, where she decided she wanted to become an actress. Her first professional role was as a cat in Miniatures at Sheffield's Crucible Theatre. She worked in several fringe theatres before gaining her Equity card in 1980. Black joined the Actor's Touring Company and performed Shakespeare around South America and in Israel, Greece and Yugoslavia.

When she returneed to the UK, she appeared with fellow-actors Josie Lawrence and Kate McKenzie at the Newcastle Playhouse in La Pasionaria - and, to further their interests in music and singing, they formed a jazz group, Denise Black & the Kray Sisters. Her friendship with Josie Lawrence landed Black parts in Channel 4's Saturday Live and Josie. Black then joined Julian Clary on stage at London's Donmar Warehouse. Black took a break from acting while expecting her first child, Sam. In 1988 she appeared at the Oldham Coliseum in The Threepenny Opera, the following year she toured with Art of Success. In 1990 she made her television drama debut in Casualty as a woman woking as a street prostitute and appeared at Bolton's Octagon Theatre in Stop Children's Laughter. Black appeared in 1991 on TV as Carrie Evans in Shoscombe Old Place, episode 60 of ITV's and WGBH, Boston's The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes and on stage as Goneril in Shakespeare's King Lear, toured in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night with the Cambridge Touring Company - and gave birth to a daughter, Dandy.

Black appeared in ITV's prime-time soap Coronation Street from 1992 to 1996 and returned in 2007. She has also appeared on The Bill, Casualty, New Tricks, Doc Martin and Bad Girls. She also performed for a period with the touring show Grumpy Old Women Live. In 2000, she played Emily Bathuirst in BBC 1's daytime soap Doctors.

Black lives in Brighton with vocal coach husband Paul Sand, whom she met while with the Actor's Touring Company and again in La Pasionaria with their children and sings with a band, 'The Loose Screw', which also consists of Michael Gregory (drums), Ben Grove (guitar), Hedi Pinkerfeld (bass) and Graeme Taylor (lead guitar). They gave a series of cabaret shows in November 2009. In August 2010, Black's band played at the Edinburgh Festival when she was in mid-UK national tour of a stage version of Calendar Girls.

On 26 September 2011, Denise played the role of Mother Superior, in the first UK tour of Sister Act the musical, alongside Michael Starke as Monsignor Howard and Cynthia Eviro as Deloris.