White Christmas, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until January 24

Darren Day today is a long way from the fallen star with a chequered past. Instead, CHARLES HUTCHINSON finds, he’s happily married and busily employed in White Christmas.

DARREN Day was last seen in Leeds playing the clerk Cornelius Hack in Hello Dolly on tour at the Grand Theatre six years ago.

This season, the 46-year-old star of stage and screen returns in Irving Berlin's White Christmas at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, where he leads Nikolai Foster's cast in the Bing Crosby-patented role of Broadway song-and-dance man and committed bachelor Bob Wallace.

In his words, White Christmas comes after a period when "I sort of consciously stepped out of musicals for a while to do screen work", from Hollyoaks to Holby City and a lead role in the British film Rudy.

"I filmed it last year and it will be premiered at Cannes next year," he says. "It's directed by Shona Auerbach, who made a wonderful film called Dear Frankie, and I play a bereaved guy, a farmer who's lost his wife and is left to bring up his three children, including a teenage daughter who can't get over her mother's death."

From 1993, former Butlins Red Coat Darren had appeared in musicals "virtually all the time", making his debut as an unknown in the West End as Joseph in Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

West End roles followed as Don in Summer Holiday, Danny in Grease and Tony in Copacabana and on tour he played Alfie in Alfie, Billy Bigelow in Carousel, Pip in Great Expectations, Jesus in Godspell, FranknFurter in The Rocky Horror Show, the aforementioned Cornelius Hack in Hello Dolly and Khashoggi in the Queen musical We Will Rock You.

"It was the writer Ben Elton's idea that Khashoggi should be played as a traditional British villain," says Darren. "I met up with Ben [the writer] and Roger Taylor and Brian May, when Ben said he'd been thinking of me playing it like Ray Winstone, which seemed to work. I loved being part of that show, but I sort of consciously stepped out of musicals for a while to do screen work.

"I would invariably finish one musical and start the next one on the Monday morning, and if there were breaks, it was to record an album or TV show, so it was quite relentless. I knew I wanted a break to have a go at screen roles, so I did Hollyoaks, where I played a London villain called Danny Houston, co-owner of a nightclub, and originally I was down to do just one show but it stretched to six months."

Nevertheless, Darren did not constrict himself to the screen. He toured in Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show, toured internationally in Stephen King’s Misery and was nominated for Best Actor in the Off West End Awards for last year's London production of the cult American musical comedy The Last Session.

The screen called again, and he arrived in Leeds to rehearse for his West Yorkshire Playhouse debut fresh from filming his role as a pantomime dame in Holby City'sChristmas special on BBC1. From one Christmas story, he has gone to another, Irving Berlin's White Christmas.

"When I was offered this musical, I didn't have to think about it for even two seconds," he says. "I was ready to come back to my theatre roots and I'm blessed to be at a wonderful theatre. I have fond memories of the film; I can remember watching it with my grandparents."

Darren met director Nikolai Foster earlier this year. "We just sort of clicked straightaway and within seconds of being in the room, I knew I wanted to be directed by him," he says. "You instinctively know with a director if it will work. He's incredibly modest, but he's incredibly hot stuff in the theatre world; he's on his way up so he's going to get hotter," he says.

As of to emphasise the point, Foster has been appointed the new artistic director of the Leicester Curve Theatre.

Six weeks of rehearsals went into White Christmas. "We got these extra days to really fine-tune it and I'm surrounded by the best – like Nikolai and Nick – and you couldn't wish to work with a better team," he says.

"Near the beginning of my career, I probably considered myself as a singer who acts, but these days I consider myself an actor who sings, and that's why doing this show is really exciting. The creative team is being entrusted with a fresh production of White Christmas [with new jazz orchestrations], and what Nikolai and his team have brought to it is a real edginess as well as wonderful big glitzy moments."

One other pleasure for Darren is that he can drive home from the performances. "I only live 45 minutes from here as I live just south of Wakefield," says the contented family man, who met his wife, Yorkshire-born Stephanie Dooley, when he was playing Buttons to her Cinderella in Derby nine years ago.

It was a life-changing moment for a fallen star with a chequered past, the "love rat" tabloid headlines, the cocaine addiction and bankruptcy problems.

"Steph showed me how life could be," he says. "If she hadn't done that, I dread to think where I might have been now."

Instead, he is dreaming of a White Christmas in Yorkshire, on and off stage.

White Christmas runs at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until January 17. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or wyp.org.uk

Did you know?

Darren Day is also a vocal impersonator, a skill he used on the satirical television series Spitting Image and now forms part of his touring cabaret show.

Did you know too?

Darren Day will appear in Owen Carey Jones's 2015 film Rough Cut as Inspector Harris, a detective investigating a diamond robbery. "Some of it was shot in Leeds; some of it in the South of France," he says. "Unfortunately, none of my scenes were in the South of France."