BURNLEY actress Julia Haworth has her sights firmly set on the future in her latest screen role on ITV next week.

Julia, 20, plays a leading role in Life Force, a 13-part sci-fi thriller set in the Year 2025, after global warning has melted the ice caps and flooded the world.

The former Nelson and Colne College student joins Coronation Street star Paul Fox - Mike Baldwin's long lost son Mark Redman - in a lead role in the futuristic drama, set on location in and around a derelict bleaching factory on the outskirts of Bolton and also at Loch Lomond.

The story of how Julia and her friends with powerful telepathic gifts fight back to help restore a damaged planet beset by the forces of evil, goes out on ITV on Monday at 4.35pm.

All in all, its a busy time for the Burnley girl now studying English and drama at Manchester University.

She will soon be joining Peak Practice, as Julie the new girl at the Black Swan pub.

Julia, whose mum Valerie is a school dinner lady and whose father Peter works for a building society, got interested in drama at the age of nine when she went to a Saturday morning workshop.

Her A levels at Nelson and Colne college included an A grade in Theatre Studies.

Granada gave her her first screen part in Three Seven Eleven and since then has appeared in Heartbeat, Medics, The Grand, See How They Run, Where The Heart Is, Monarch of the Glen and the medical drama Always And Everyone.

Julia, who has an elder brother Paul, 23, says drama has been good for her from the beginning.

"I was very shy and this helped me gain more confidence."

In a busy world of filming and studying, the budding actress is very clear about what she misses most about being away from home: "Mum's potato pie," she says.

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