SHE'S the actress whose career has never looked more glittering — but Joanna Page takes it all in her stride.

The Gavin and Stacey TV comedy star says she is as excited about its huge success as anyone else!

She said: "I can't wait until I get a phone call saying the scripts are being sent out. I'm always really excited and sit by the letterbox waiting to see what's going to happen to Stacey! I'm just like everybody else who watches the show."

She's not the only one. The Christmas special saw ratings soar to seven million, when it was broadcast on BBC1 for the first time. After two successful series, writers Ruth Jones and James Corden had pressure from fans, co-stars and from BBC bosses to pen a third run.

Joanna, whose family home is in the Mumbles area of Swansea, is as thrilled as anyone that they finally agreed to it in December. She said: "I was so pleased there was going to be another series – it's fantastic.

"I was chuffed when I heard, because I think there are lots of places that the characters can go and there's lots of stories they can write.

"Fingers crossed, the next series will be great. It will be lovely to be back working with everybody, and in Cardiff as well. I really enjoy it — it's not like a job any more. It's like having fun with your friends."

The show isn't just a hit with fans — the critics seem to love it as well. Among its haul over the past 18 months are four British Comedy awards, two Baftas and a South Bank Show award, while last week Joanna was at the Elle Style Awards to pick up another gong for the show.

She said: "It's just so exciting to be getting awards for it. Some people ask if we get bored winning awards, and I say not at all."

Before landing the role of Stacey, Joanna was a regular face on the small screen, including a part in Russell T Davies's Swansea-set drama Mine All Mine. But it was her role playing Judy in hit film Love Actually that gave Joanna a higher profile.

However, Gavin and Stacey has undoubtedly been her break into the mainstream, and Joanna says it's a show which will always be special to her.

She said: "I have been working for 10 years, but this is the show that sort of got people to know me a bit more. I think it's a special show to me because I have enjoyed working on it.

"It's not very often when a job comes along that you've got a great part and you're working with a great cast and everybody gets along."

As Gavin and Stacey found its way into the nation's heart, so did Joanna, who soon landed a role in the West End. Last summer, She starred alongside Robert Webb and Kris Marshall in Neil LaBute's Fat Pig, to rave reviews.

After filming the Gavin and Stacey Christmas special, she starred alongside Gareth Gates in panto as Cinderella at the New Wimbledon Theatre.

But now she's turning her thoughts to less family- oriented entertainment, with a role in The Vagina Monologues. She will be appearing at Cardiff's Millennium Centre for a five- night run reading Eve Ensler's infamous script.

She will sit alongside Neath weathergirl Sian Lloyd and Gavin and Stacey co-star Margaret John, who stars as neighbour Doris in the show.

Joanna said: "It'll be brilliant to be back on stage. I'm really looking forward to it, because the Millennium Centre is such a beautiful building. It will just be really exciting.

"It'll be lovely working with Sian and Margaret. I've met Sian now because we've had rehearsals for the monologues and I'd met her a few times before at events, so I felt like I already knew her. I think it'll be lovely. We all get along with each other really well. I think we'll have a brilliant week together.

"The show ends with a monologue about birth, and the first time I read that it just made me cry, because I thought it was so beautiful.

"After reading all the monologues, I just felt really inspired and really pleased to be a woman and felt amazing. I think everybody who comes to see it will hopefully love it. I'm not embarrassed."

As Joanna explains, it will give her a chance to be back at home — somewhere she can't seem to get enough of.

"I'm looking forward to being back in Wales as well, because I didn't get a chance when I was doing Fat Pig in London," she said.

"It will be really nice to spend a week back home with my parents. I miss Swansea so much. I went to Cardiff last week to do something for Radio 4 and I got off the train and it was just amazing. I just felt really happy because, although I'm from Swansea, just getting off the train, I thought 'I'm home'."

Joanna — who is married to actor James Thornton — lived in Treboeth until she was 14 before moving to Mumbles, a time she seems to remember fondly.

She said: "It was lovely growing up in Wales. When we moved to Mumbles, I was lucky enough to live opposite the sea. It was absolutely beautiful.

"People in Wales are so happy and everybody smiles and talks to each other all the time. Then suddenly you go to London and nobody talks to each other. I just love going back home.

"It's definitely my plan to move back to Wales eventually. When James and I have children, we definitely want to move back. I'd love to live by the sea again.

"It's quite difficult coming up to London, aged 18, and not having any family or friends around you and having to knuckle down and get on with it, because you want to pursue your dream and become an actress. I miss my family."

But when Joanna is back in Swansea, she has favourites when it comes to relaxing.

She said: " When I'm back home, I go to the Kardomah, opposite where Mothercare used to be. They do the most amazing pancakes. I always go in there.

"I also spend time down in Mumbles at Joe's ice cream parlour."

Joanna is just one of the successful acting exports from the Swansea Bay area, and it seems it is Welsh talents who have inspired her most.

She says: "Anthony Hopkins and Richard Burton are just fantastic and have inspired me a lot, and Michael Sheen is absolutely amazing. He completely loses himself in every single character he does. He's just fantastic."

But even though Joanna hasn't conquered Hollywood just yet, she still has her fair share of crazy fans.

She said: "The other day I went to a comedy night in Greenwich and there was a group of girls — I think they were on a hen party or a birthday. They came up and they were screaming in my face and kissing me. So that was a bit mad. They were all really lovely so it was fine, but it was a bit scary!"

Joanna lives in London with husband James, who she first met on the set of a BBC adaptation of David Copperfield. Neither of them spoke until they were introduced by mutual friend Maxine Peake.

Five years after marrying, it seems life couldn't be sweeter for Joanna.

She said: "Married life is lovely. It's just like everybody else's married life. I spent yesterday doing seven loads of washing and putting all the socks together, so I was exhausted after doing that. When I get home, I've got to do all the ironing!

"It's just like normal married life. But it's really lovely. It's really nice when you do a job that's so hectic and all over the place, when you don't know what's happening and what you're doing next, and then it's lovely to go home, walk through the door and I've got my husband there and my little Jack Russell dog.

"There's nothing I like more than our weekends together when I just get to sit in bed, read the papers, have the dog lying between us and watching T4 on the TV.

"I'm thinking I want to have children definitely, but in the long term. I'm too busy at the moment. I'm not thinking about anything like that. I'm just concentrating on my work and my job and stuff.

"My job is so exciting, because I never know what's coming next and I'm just all over the place and going from one thing to another. It makes the time with my family and husband special."

But it seems that no matter how exciting Joanna's life gets, her life in Swansea will always be a big part of who she is.

She said: "It's very important for me to remember my roots. It's where I'm from. I'm so Welsh through and through.

"What makes me laugh sometimes when I go to auditions and people will want my qualities and feistiness and my passion with an English accent, and the two things just don't really sort of go, because I'm so Welsh.

"I love being Welsh and I love going home and I love the people. Getting off the train and being in Wales — I just love the feeling. I don't think I could ever leave my roots."

The Vagina Monologues is at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff from Monday until Friday. For tickets phone 08700 402000 or visit www.wmc.org.uk

For more showbiz gossip - see Edward Gleave's Celebrity Scoop in Saturday's Post.