How do you combine life as a busy actress with observing Judaism? For Kate Anthony - best known as Coronation Street's Auntie Pam - her work means juggling TV, stage and radio roles with keeping kosher and preparing for her son's barmitzvah.
"I keep kosher at home and stick to it when I am travelling. Obviously I don't get to go to shul on Shabbat often as I'm usually doing two shows a day. But my agent knows to not book things in for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur."
Her most recent screen role was in hit show Game of Thrones Huge secrecy surrounded the audition process.
"My agent rang me up and said Game of Thrones want to see you." says Anthony, "So I went to the audition and immediately had to sign three pieces of paper saying I wouldn't disclose anything about the audition. Nor would they tell me anything about the character and I read from a script that had already aired."
Anthony learned she had got the role and from there on in, the secrecy levels escalated. "It was hilarious," she says, "They set up a separate email account with everything accessed by a code. As soon as I downloaded an email it was deleted. They sent scripts with only my scenes, nothing about my character or other scenes. I had no idea what she was in relation to anyone else. They flew me out to Girona for filming, I was in a hotel with only actors involved in my scenes. To be honest I had no idea what was going on."
Her character, a Bravossi woman, had scenes with Richard E Grant who was equally mystified. "He said 'I've no idea darling. Say the words and accept the pay cheque'."
"Ridiculous really, I mean it's only a telly programme!" she adds.
Her latest theatre role is as Clara Soppitt in Northern Broadsides production of J B Priestley's When We Are Married, a tale of three couples who all wed on the same day and, 25 years later, discover that due to a technical error, they are not actually married. "She's the best character. Barrie Rutter who runs Northern Broadsides phoned me up and said 'I'm doing When We Are Married, what do you think? Pick which part you want!' I read it again and told him it had to be Clara Soppitt. She's the pantomime baddie, a tyrant, hysterical, a great part to play."
Anthony is a familiar face from Coronation Street, where she played Auntie Pam Hobsworth to Molly Dobbs - ironically, in her first scene she was selling ham. She joined the cast in 2008 for six months and nearly four years and 128 episodes later she was still there, only leaving after her niece, Molly, was killed off.
"People still recognise me as Auntie Pam, I was lucky she was nice. I loved it, the people were great and it was great fun. I did get a lot of work after that, it raises your profile. The hardest thing for me was leaving my family in London and having to go backwards and forwards to Manchester."
Anthony, 53, is married to PR executive Gary Barak and the couple have two children, Lola, 15 and Nathan, a JFS student, who is to be barmitzvah in February next year. An active member of Ealing United Hebrew Congregation, she is a regular guest for dinner at Rabbi Vogel's home. "And if I am away working, he asks Gary and the children to go."
Kate was brought up in a traditional Orthodox home in Leeds. "My parents, Jacquie and Tony Lee, ran a jewellery stall in Leeds market and we lived in Alwoodley. Acting was definitely not normal for a nice Jewish girl from Leeds. I wanted to be a journalist. I did my A Levels at Harrogate Grammar School and I went to Israel for gap year. I did the whole kibbutz thing, and became uncertain about what to do next. I was meant to do journalism at university"
Kate decided to do a drama A Level at Park Lane college in Leeds where her tutor was acclaimed writer and actor Vanessa Rosenthal; "Vanessa said I should audition for Webber Douglas Drama College," recalls Kate, "I went down, auditioned and got in and that was it. It was the weirdest twist of fate."
Kate has appeared in many popular television shows including Doctors, Heartbeat, Casualty, Boomers and Trollied. However, her favourite role both in life and work is that of a mother. She's played "Mum" in comedian Tom Wrigglesworth's BBC Radio 4 series Hang Ups for three years; "I love radio. I look forward to Hang Ups every year. We record two episodes in front of a live audience once a week for three weeks".
Her role of mum in real life though takes precedence; "Gary is a fantastic support and is both mum and dad but this year when Lola is taking her GCSEs and we have Nathan's barmitzvah, I will try to be working in London more because I want to be home to support them."
There's one other mother role she'd love to tackle, that of the controlling and manipulative matriarch Volumnia in Shakespeare's Coriolanus: "It's not done very often because I suspect it's not very commercially viable but she's the most incredible character and it's my favourite Shakespeare."
Meanwhile she is touring in When We Are Married until mid December; "Then I'll be in full Jewish mother mode leading up to Nathan's barmitvah!"
