Denise Black

Denise Black
Real name: Denise Nixon Born: 1959, Portsmouth, Hampshire Married: Paul Sand Children:  Contact:
 * 1) Sam
 * 2) Dandy

Played: Denise Osbourne (1992 - February 1996; 22 November 1996)

Denise Nixon was born in 1959 in Portsmouth, Hampshire to Stella, a bank teller and Don Nixon, an Lieutenant engineer in the Navy. She has an older sister Carol who works as a dentist. Denise was educated at Girls Public Day School Trust in Portsmouth and excelled at O levels. She left school and took various jobs including working in a local mental home and studied Psychology at University of London. After graduation she began travelling and went to Gibraltar before moving to the West Indies, where she was when she decided she wanted to become an actress.

Her first professional role was as a pussy cat in Miniatures at Sheffield's Crucible Theatre before she went on to work in several fringe theatres. After gaining her equity card in 1980, Denise joined the Actor's Touring Company and performed Shakespeare plays in countries as far apart as South America, Israel, Greece and Yugoslavia. On her return to England, Denise teamed up with Josie Lawrence and Kate McKenzie at the Newcastle Playhouse in La Pasionaria and to further their interests in music and singing they formed the jazz group Denise Black and the Kray Sisters. Her friendship with Josie Lawrence landed her parts in Saturday Live and Josie.

Denise then joined Julian Clarey on stage at the Dormar Warehouse in London. The following year Denise took a break from acting whilst expecting her first child. In 1988 she appeared at the Oldham Coliseum in The Threepenny Opera, the following year she toured with Art of Success. In 1990 she made her television debut in Casualty as a street hooker and also on stage at the Bolton Octagon Theatre in Stop Children's Laughter. Denise also appeared on screen as Carrie Evans in The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes and on stage as Goneril in King Lear. In 1991 she toured in Twelfth Night with the Cambridge Touring Company and gave birth to her second child.

In 1992, Denise appeared inThe Bill, played a Gypsy in A Touch of Frost and a Police woman in Between The Lines before joining Coronation Street as hair dresser Denise Osbourne, a role she played until February 1996. She then played clairvoyant Eve August in Dangerfield and appeared in her husband's musical Mad And Her Dog. In November she returned to Coronation Street for another six months. She then joined Lesley Joseph in Channel 4's adaptation of Macbeth before filming the mini-series drama The Things We Do For Love in which she played Pat Phoenix as a young woman.

She is also strongly involved in fringe and alternative theatre, and is now getting involved in production. Indeed, most of the production work for Mad and her Dog was organised by her from the Coronation Street Green Room, and this was one of the contributing factors which led her to leave The Street - though rumours are that she would like to return at some later stage.

Denise lives with her husband since 1992, musician and composer Paul Sand who she met at an audition and their children, Sam, born in 1988 and Dandy, born in 1991. They now live in Crystal Palace, London after moving from Yorkshire in 1996.

Denise was born with a condition that caused her fingers to deform and cross over each other.