She states that her childhood was a happy one despite the adventures with the blackboard at Christmas 1976! At school she was a bright pupil, but being bullied in secondary school prevented her from from settling down and consequently, she didn't not like school. Dervla says that the bullying was verbal rather than physical and very, very nasty. The situation was resolved when, pushed to the end of her tether one day, she punched the ringleader on the nose and was never bothered again!

I absolutely loathed school. I felt I never really fitted in . . . one day between classes I punched the ringleader right on the nose. I shocked myself by doing it. It taught me a very important lesson. If you don't fight back, you will just get walked on in life. I don't thump people on the nose now, but I don't take any crap either."

Whatever the reason behind it, she soon stood out in the class as one of the talented ones, and soon she was going for auditions. Her first major role was in Charles Sturridge's 'The Troubles' at the age of 15. This role led to many other offers on TV and on the Dublin stage and soon she had enough work to consider moving to London.

Firstly, however, she had her Leaving Cert to get through. With a teacher for a mother, there was no way she was going to escape finishing her education, so she appplied herself to passing her exams so that she could concentrate on her career.

At the age of eighteen, she landed the female lead in Melvyn Bragg's 'A Time To Dance'. Bernadette Kennedy was 18, just out of school when she started an affair with the local bank manager, Andrew Powell (Ronald Pickup). This three-part drama contained scenes which, by today's standards are nothing out of the ordinary, but at the time were very controversial and led to a great deal of criticism. To be fair, it wasn't aimed at Dervla personally - her performance received great acclaim - but it took it's toll and even today, she is not keen to discuss it, stating that it was rather a fuss about nothing, but that she wasn't protected from the backlash.

"I don't regret taking the role - I was a young Irish actress being offered a leading BBC role . . . I feel I was exploited, I'm not going to deny that. I hope, in ten years time, I will be able to laugh about it, but it takes an awfully long time to live down a part like that."

In 1995, she began filming the series that would undoubtedly change both her professional and personal life beyond measure. Ballykissangel was the BBC's biggest drama success story in 15 years and Dervla was catapulted into the limelight with a vengence. It was at this time that she met and fell in love with her Ballykissangel co-star Stephen Tompkinson. They began dating in September 1995 and announced their engagement in March 1998. At the time of writing, we are awaiting news of a wedding (but I won't go into that again!).

One of her main talents is an ability to change accents. She says that both her mother and father are good mimics with a keen sense of humour and she has inherited their ability to copy accents. This has been proven in shows such as Goodnight Sweetheart, A Time To Dance and Mr White Goes To Westminster. However, she was relieved to be able to relax a little in Ballykissangel and stick to her own accent!

Dervla states that, speaking in your own accent means that you have loess of the character to hide behind and, although she bears many similarities to her BallyK character, Assumpta, they are not the same person.

"She (Assumpta) is a fictional character, of course. She is not me, but I think we do have a very similar temperament."

"I always want to be achieving something special. I can come across as very stubborn but I refuse to let any opportunity walk past me. We have only got one life and there is no point in playing safe."

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