Katherine Kelly wouldn't consider herself vain, but the actress has admitted she had a shock when she saw herself on screen for her latest role.

"I was like, 'Oh my god, I look horrendous'," exclaimed the 33-year-old. "It's amazing how being horrible can make you look absolutely awful.

"But then my make-up artist Christopher says, 'By the time you hit your thirties, you get the face you deserve', and I think it's true. Even with all the work you can get done nowadays, if you're a horrible person, it ekes out of you."

The former Coronation Street star is referring to Maloney, the pursed-lipped, no-nonsense editor-in-chief of a newspaper group who, in the second series of The Field Of Blood, arrives at the Glasgow newsroom ready to shake things up and bring the newspaper into the modern age.

"She's been sent in to get rid of loads of jobs and to make it more cash-efficient," explained Katherine. "I don't like her but I wanted to play her because she has no redeeming features whatsoever."

The two-part crime drama is based in the early Eighties, set against a backdrop of the miners' strike and the changing face of journalism. In the book by Denise Mina on which it's based, Maloney's a man, but screenwriter and director David Kane thought it would be more interesting if the character was a woman.

"It's 1984 and we're right in Thatcher territory," said Katherine, who rose to fame as Becky McDonald in the ITV soap. "The whole essence of the piece is the miners versus Thatcher, and it's almost echoed in the newsroom. She's the Thatcher of the newsroom."

The Barnsley-born actress said she and Kane agreed it was important that Maloney, who's happy to turn on the miners' plight, had a northern accent.

"It suggests she was from a place that Thatcher would have hit badly and actually, the way she is isn't nature, it's nurture," Kelly explained. "She's turned herself into this beast and potentially turned her back on her community through sheer determination and ambition."

:: The Field Of Blood: The Dead Hour is on BBC One on August 8-9.