Belinda Lang is an actor, producer and director best known for her role in long-running sitcom 2Point4 Children.

The daughter of actors Jeremy Hawk and Joan Heal, Lang both performs in and directs Noel Coward’s Present Laughter at Theatre Royal Brighton from Monday to Saturday, January 30.

Tickets on 0844 8717615. Robert Bathhurst plays the self-obsessed actor Garry Essendine in this sumptuous new production.

Is there a performer who made you think “I want to do that?”

My mother was an actress, so of course I was very influenced by that as a child [Joan Heal was one of the best-known names of musical theatre in the 1950s]. I suppose she was rather good at it, so I admired her a lot as a child, and I was also a keen fan of Ethel Merman, however dotty that sounds – I was very inspired by watching her because she had such joy and gusto... it’s a wonderful trick to make people excited in that way.

Do you remember the first record you bought? What was it, and where did you buy it?

I didn’t buy it myself, but I remember it being bought for me and asking for it, and it was [Johnny Duncan skiffle classic] Last Train To San Fernando...”biddy biddy boom” with great emphasis on the “biddy biddy boom boom”, which I thought was great.

Tell us about any guilty pleasures lurking in your CD or film collections – something you know is a bit naff but you can’t help yourself.

That’s not the case for me. I suppose I’m unashamed about my CD and film collections.

I love old musicals and I’m perfectly happy to have things on display that people might find very corny. So it might not be everyone’s idea of a good time, but I proudly display my copy of The Sound Of Music, which I know is controversial.

Do you have a favourite film?

Day For Night, the François Truffaut film, which I think is the most brilliant satire about the film industry and actors’ behaviour. It’s terribly funny, it’s very chic and it’s French. I went to a French school, so I’ve always liked French films anyway, but it’s incredibly well observed. A close runner-up, weirdly, is Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. I find it very moving, and I don’t know why. I absolutely love it.

The two bear no relation at all!

And what about a favourite album?

That’s really difficult, because I don’t have a favourite, but I love the score to On The Town, the musical. I’m also a huge Randy Newman fan – his album Sail Away is representative of some of his best work.

What are you reading at the moment?

There’s a list: Cecil Beaton’s diaries, Noel Coward’s letters, Tyrone Guthrie’s autobiography and an Alan Bennett book – it’s the one about his parents – A Life Like Other People’s. It’s very sweet.

What made you decide to shift the 1930s setting of Present Laughter to 1949?

Well, it’s understandable that Coward didn’t want to put any mention of looming war in the text but, because nobody mentions it in the play, I wanted to get away from that shadow of war. But it’s also because I wanted to feel it could take place now, which is much easier when you get people out of those 1930s clothes and away from the furniture people assume was around then. It’s closer to our time and less specific in that all the clothes could be worn today.

Why is Coward still performed so frequently today?

It’s just that old-fashioned thing of it being incredibly well-crafted. There are 11 fabulous characters in this play and there’s not a lazy moment or a line you don’t want to say. People imagine his wit to be stuck-on or affected, but if you say his lines with ease, he’s only saying the sort of thing you and I come out with all the time, we just wish we’d said it like that.

Is it hard work wearing two hats, as both director and performer?

I love it. It’s inconvenient at worst, because you think: “I want to be watching this”, and you can’t. It’s annoying for the actors... “Just hold that pose while I run out front and see if it works!” But normally, if you’re directing a play, you have the press night and then you wave goodbye to the cast and you get on with your life. But they’re stuck with me on this one!