Sitting in a bathtub surrounded by rotting meat and intestines is all in a day’s work for Melanie Denholme.

“We chucked in some fake blood and ribs from our food from the night before, so I could pretend I was chewing them,” she says.

“It smelled awful.”

But that wasn’t the worst bit. “I didn’t think about it at the time but of course rotting flesh is full of bacteria,” she says, cheerfully.

“So I had to have a load of antibiotics.”

And even this was preferable to the day she spent ‘freezing to death’ in a rock-pool one November.

“Every film has pushed some kind of stunt, just as you think there’s no way you can beat that they come up with something else and you think oh my goodness. Then you think; just bring it on.”

It’s this attitude that’s helped Melanie rise to become one of our top horror actresses, starring in movies such as Anna, Scream Queen Killer (for which she’s just won an award), Dark Satanic Magick and the upcoming Succubi.

It’s a bit different to the type of productions she starred in as a member of the amateur dramatics society in New Milton, and her days as a schoolgirl studying drama at The Grange in Christchurch.

“At school drama was my favourite thing, it was the only subject where I came alive, but it wasn’t the best school so I left early, at 16,” she says.

Put off by what she describes as the number of supply teachers ‘who couldn’t be bothered’, she felt she could get more work done at home. “So I went to work full time and studied by myself and got quite good results.”

Melanie learned her craft in amdram, even after marrying and moving to Wales. “I was with a group there when I won a best actress award and that’s what gave me the nudge to go professional,” she says.

Her first official film was a comedy, The Flirting Club. She trialled for another film and the company liked her so much they re-wrote the script to give her a larger part.

Advised by a marketing expert to become ‘genre specific’, Melanie decided to stick with horror. “I’ve become better known for that than anything else but hopefully I won’t get stuck in it, I want to do everything,” she says. She believes horror is a good grounding for any actor. “I love the roles; they are gritty, they are something to get my teeth into, they are extravagant and they are challenging,” she says.

She’s right about the teeth bit; images of her wearing fangs and blood have become a bit of a trademark look.

“Because of the extreme make-up and costumes in horror you can actually be quite anonymous in real life,” she says.

“No one would recognise me in the street here but when I get dressed up and go to a horror convention in the USA, it’s massive.”

She appears in myth-based, Hammer-style horror and because of this does a lot of reading around the subject.

“There’s no way you would find your character if you didn’t,” she says.

“For Lady In The Dark I did a ridiculous amount of research into yoga and inner chakras. For Succubi I had to know where the myth came from and what they were about.”

Because of the nature of modern horror she also has to take her clothes off quite a bit, too.

“The first time I had to do it I was petrified, shaking like a leaf,” she says.

“But I have the sort of personality where I will push myself to do it and once you’ve done it once, you don’t worry at all.”

Anyway, she says: “It’s all very professional with a closed set, and dressing gowns and hot water bottles to keep you warm.”

Her children know what she does for a living but haven’t seen her work although that might change if she can eventually move into mainstream movieland.

“I’d love to be in a film with Leonardo de Caprio or Johnny Depp,” she says.

“But then I’d also love to star in a period drama, too.”