JUDY Garland’s 12 year-old body was pumped full of pills and most of her teenage years spent keeping adults happy; her mother, her mother’s partners, and later as a grown up, her own five husbands.

Yet, fans loved her because she wore her heart not just on her sleeve, but on every item of clothing she possessed.

What all this means is that any actress who plays the tragic lady on stage really needs a challenging life experience to draw from in order to channel all that angst.

Lisa Maxwell, who starred in ITV drama the Bill for seven years as Detective Inspector Sam Nixon, certainly fits the bill.

Lisa stars as Judy in upcoming theatre play End of the Rainbow, set in London’s Talk of the Town when the singer’s career, and life, was falling through the floor.

The blonde actress, like the Hollywood legend, was also a child star. Growing up in South London, Lisa attended the Italia Conti stage school, working professionally from the age of eleven.

“I can relate to a lot of the pressure Judy was under as a child, although I didn’t really know it at the time.

“And she had a warped idea of what love was. I think love of an audience was the only real love she understood. But how can you really be loved by someone who doesn’t know you?

“I got caught up in all of that. You see, it’s fun to be a child performer, (she starred in Annie, aged fourteen), you get to show off and people say lots of nice things about you.

“But you don’t know what to do when it stops. You don’t really know who you are or how to exist in a happy place.”

Yet, so many actors buy into this ‘love’?

“Yes, there is an element of me that is validated when I go on stage. When we began this conversation I talked about enjoying a standing ovation in a theatre in Malvern.

“Acting does have a profound effect on you. But you can’t let it define you. It’s such a transient, precarious world to exist in, and it’s hard enough to get a job, so to depend upon applause, well you won’t get it for seventy per cent of your year.”

Lisa adds; “Performing really did have a negative effect on me, but it only really manifested itself later in life when I was living in Los Angeles. All my family were back in London and I was very lonely.

“What I realised was it’s very easy to be swept along by everybody else’s ambition for you. You don’t want to let everybody down. I’m sure this is what Judy felt when she became hooked on tablets.

“Thankfully, the worst thing that happened to me was developing a minor eating disorder, which I managed to overcome.”

Lisa was however hooked on acting. And she has a personality which requires she gives one hundred per cent of herself to any project. This dedication (or perhaps obsession) to the work, meant she had to leave the Bill.

“The show was all-consuming. If you’re in your twenties it’s great but it got to the point when I had my little girl (Beau) that the show was becoming more important than everything else.

“I actually had two miscarriages while working, and what was really worrying was I didn’t want to go home and rest. I wanted to finish filming. Paul (now her husband) told me it wasn’t right. And I realised it was time to catch up with reality.”

There is another unfortunate comparison with Garland, whose father died when she was very young. And he was hardly the traditional, loving dad, a closet gay with a predatory predilection for young men, the performing family continually moved town to avoid arrest.

“It’s not a great start in life, to be fair.”

Lisa, who featured on Loose Women for six years, also grew up without biological father closeness. Her dad was a married man when she was conceived and she never met him until she was forty-five.

“Yet, Judy married a gay man, and repeated the cycle. And when she married Sid Luft, who wasn’t gay, he sold her out.”

This theatre piece is most definitely not a jukebox musical, although it doesn’t feature Lisa performing some Garland classics such as Somewhere Over The Rainbow.

“It’s an award-winning play about a star's end, but it's not all doom and gloom,” says Lisa, in bright voice. “It begins on a note of optimism.when Judy is free of the chains of Sid Luft, ready to marry Mickey Deans. and make some money she can finally keep for herself.

“We see her perform at the top of her game, and she’s funny with a really dark sense of humour. Garland is a vaudevillian, who tries to make light of the darkest situations.

“But of course the need to take drugs dominates and eventually beats her into submission.”

The actress adds; “It’s a story that’s still relevant today, when you look at people such as Amy Winehouse."

Is it painful to perform this tragic figure? “Yes, I feel it every night,” she admits. “And on top of all that I have to be able to sing like Judy Garland.”

She grins; “You know, it scares the s*** out of me.”

Lisa’s worries, you know, will give an edge to her performance. If she weren’t concerned about playing Garland, she wouldn’t be the terrific actress she is.

“I hope you don’t think a woman of my age should be in a bath chair,” she says, grinning.

Yet if she didn’t have the experience that being fifty two and being in the business forty years offers, she couldn’t play Garland?

“I know,” she agrees, laughing. “Halle-bloody-lujah. Finally, I land a job in which the prerequisite is you have to be an old bird.”

• End of the Rainbow also stars Gary Wilmot and Sam Attwater, the King’s Theatre, April 26 – 30.