An American soap star has been appointed as the new president of a popular theatre company based in Stroud.

The Cotswold Players has announced Emma Samms MBE as its new president following the death of John Carlin in 2017.

She is best known for her role as Holly Sutton in the American daytime soap opera General Hospital, and as Fallon Carrington Colby in the prime-time soap opera Dynasty.

She has also appeared in the BBC series Holby City and Doctors.

Emma lives in the Cotswolds and this week visited the Cotswold Playhouse in Parliament Street, Stroud, to be shown around the theatre by the Players’ Chairman, Patrick Howell, and the committee member responsible for Outreach, John Salter.

She was given a potted history of the Players, including their beginnings in 1911 as an enthusiastic amateur group performing in local schools, churches, halls, etc., in the villages and towns around Stroud.

By the 1930s they had begun performing in the Church Institute building in the Shambles in Stroud, until in 1951 they purchased a more permanent home, a Victorian Methodist Chapel in Parliament Street which they have converted into a landmark theatre, the Cotswold Playhouse.

In the intervening years the building has been further developed, culminating in a major £500,000 extension in 2007-8, which was officially opened by Sir Ian McKellen in 2009.