SHE started her acting career as a toddler in the village pantomime and went on to star in a host of top TV shows including Mistresses, Cutting It, Doctor Who and Atlantis.

Sarah Parish will reveal the secrets of her success to a sold-out audience of 450 local thespians when she guest stars at the Daily Echo Curtain Call Awards 2016 later this month.

The popular actress, who will join the cast of Broadchurch for series three, will open the golden envelopes to reveal the winners of a raft of awards, including the coveted Production of the Year.

For our version of the Academy Awards for amateur dramatics, the Daily Echo's team of reviewers spent last year scouring the area seeking out the very best actors, producers and crews in genres from comedy to drama, youth to pantomimes and musicals to Shakespeare.

Sarah's big break in TV came in a Boddingtons beer advert and she went on to star as salon owner Allie Henshall in Cutting It and GP Dr Katie Roden in Mistresses.

She has frequently starred opposite David Tennant - in the 2004 musical serial Blackpool; the Tony Marchant drama Recovery and the 2006 Doctor Who Christmas special episode The Runaway Bride and will reunite with him in the final series of hit Dorset drama Broadchurch, which is due to be broadcast from next month.

Sarah played antagonist Pasiphaë in the fantasy drama show Atlantis.

Now living in rural Hampshire, Sarah grew up in Somerset. Her first stage appearance was aged two in a pantomime in the village of Tintinhull playing the pearl in an oyster. She attended Yeovil Youth Theatre before training in London.

Her other TV roles have included Peak Practice, Merlin, Monroe and Trollied.

Sarah is currently working with the Daily Echo on the #MatchMyMoney campaign dreamed up by her and Primeval actor husband James Murray.

It aims to raise £40,000 towards a campaign to build the South's own version of Great Ormond Street at Southampton General Hospital. Money raised by our readers will then be doubled by the Barker-Mill Foundation, and that money will be doubled again by central government – meaning that £40,000 will become £160,000.

Sarah and James set up the Murray Parish Trust in memory of their late daughter Ella-Jayne, who died in 2009 after being treated in the hospital's Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU).