Denise Black

Denise Black (born 16 March 1958) is an English actress. She is best known for her roles in Coronation Street and Emmerdale and guest starring as Jessie Devlin Denny Blood's mother in ITV drama series Bad Girls. Early life and career Black was born in Emsworth, Hampshire. After attending Portsmouth High School for Girls, she studied psychology at London University. She had taken a number of jobs, including working in a local psychiatric care home. After graduating, she travelled to Gibraltar and later the West Indies, where she decided she wanted to become an actress. Her first professional role was as a cat in Miniatures at Sheffield's Crucible Theatre. She worked in several fringe theatres before gaining her Equity card in 1980. Black joined the Actors' Touring Company and performed Shakespeare around South America and in Israel, Greece and Yugoslavia. When Black returned to the UK, she appeared with fellow-actresses Josie Lawrence and Kate McKenzie at the Newcastle Playhouse in La Pasionaria, and to further their interests in music and singing, they formed a jazz group, Denise Black & the Kray Sisters. Her friendship with Lawrence landed Black parts in Channel 4's Saturday Live and Josie. Black then joined Julian Clary on stage at London's Donmar Warehouse. In 1988 she appeared at the Oldham Coliseum in The Threepenny Opera. Over the years, Black would feature in numerous other stage productions including Art of Success; Stop Children's Laughter (at Bolton's Octagon Theatre), and Shakespeare's King Lear and Twelfth Night (with the Cambridge Touring Company).