Beautiful, funny, talented, sexy. Don’t you just hate her? Yup, Sarah Jayne Dunn has got it all, which is why she’s been tagged “the blonde bombshell”. But having grown up on Hollyoaks, she’s now broken away from soaps and is busy proving that there’s more to her than just a pretty face.

Much as you want to, you can’t dislike Sarah Jayne Dunn.

Yes, she may be sickeningly gorgeous, but she’s so sunny and enthusiastic with it, that you can’t begrudge her a thing, especially her newfound success outside Hollyoaks.

Putting her CV where her mouth is, she’s doing a great job of showing that SJD has got what it takes in the world of theatre and film and is wowing audiences across the UK.

Currently starring in Vagina Monologues, coming to the New Theatre for one night only on Thursday, Sarah says she’s become unshockable, and delights in the hysterically intimate stories which she regales to a predominantly female audience every night. “I’m really enjoying it,” she agrees.

So was there a hint of prudishness when she first heard about the role?

“No, I wanted it immediately. I was in from the start. And after all we are only recounting things that actually happen to women. Yes, you have to be quite open-minded, but this is what actually happens in the real world.

“And you have to be a professional to portray these women properly because some of their stories are so poignant.”

Vagina Monologues is a collection of highly original stories gathered by the show’s dynamic creator Eve Ensler. Ensler asked more than 200 women of all ages, ethnic backgrounds and walks of life to share their most intimate secrets in ‘vagina interviews’ on such normally taboo topics as birth, sex, orgasms and relationships with truly revelatory results.

And Emmerdale star Lisa Riley, Coronation Street’s Sally Lindsay, and SJD are the three stars disclosing the stories to the Oxford audience.

So you don’t get many men in the audience then?

“I think they get put off by the name,” Sarah laughs.

And yet the ones who do come are there as much to ogle at Sarah as to see the show, “sexiest female” being one of her memorable awards.

So why isn’t she on the red carpet so much these days? “I don’t have time,” she laughs. “All girls like dressing up, having their hair and make-up done and putting on amazing frocks, but you can’t do that all the time.”

And having ticked the Hollywood box already, in a part opposite Christian Bale in the recent Batman movie Dark Knight, she’s used to the attention. So is this the kind of thing SJD left Hollyoaks for? “I’ve been so lucky because very few actors have regular work for such a long period of time but I find it really exciting to take on a new job and then emerge from the tunnel and wonder what’s next. I just want to work and try different things. And I love the theatre, so I’d love to do musical theatre next,” she says, “or a TV period drama.”

And presumably 10 years in Hollyoaks was a brilliant apprenticeship? “Soaps are such a hard discipline because you have to be so on the ball,” she says. “And I loved my character Mandy. She grew up as I grew up and she changed over the years and I didn’t want to leave her behind.”

So why leave? “I wanted to know what else was out there and I was more excited than scared. And I felt that Mandy had been through enough,” she laughs.

For those of you who didn’t watch it, her character was sexually abused by her father, lost her mother in a car accident, her brother to suicide and her baby to cot death.

“But that’s the great thing about soaps,” Sarah adds, “ because all those things can happen to the characters and they just carry on regardless. And that’s why people watch them."

* Sarah Jayne Dunn is in the Vagina Monologues at the New Theatre on Thursday. Call the box office on 0844 8471588.