In the middle of 1989, Dannii won the role of Emma Jackson in Home & Away. While she was excited about the part, it meant packing up and moving the Sydney leaving her friends and family behind in Melbourne. She barely had time to settle into her new home when she was called into work. The part of Emma the punk meant a new look for Dannii - she dyed her long hair, painted her fingernails black, slapped on lashings of eye liner and red lipstick and became a troublemaker.

It wasn't long before the punk look was ditched in favour of a more conservative style, but the change of image didn't mean that Emma had turned into Miss Goody Two Shoes - she still got into trouble (much to her aunt and uncle's despair). On a personal level, Dannii was able to prove to the critics that her part in Home & Away wasn't just an attempt to cash in on Kylie's success in Neighbours. She soon became one of the most popular soap stars in Australia and was nominated for a Silver Logie for Most Popular Actress on Australian television.

How did you originally get the role of Emma Jackson?

"Terry, my manager, spoke to them and they asked if I would come and do an audition, so I auditioned for the part of Marilyn. I knew at the time that that wasn't the part I would be doing, they just wanted a screentest so they could have a look at it to show to the directors and producers. Then they wrote a part for me or maybe they already had it in mind, I don't know."

How long after the audition did you have to wait to see whether you had got the role?

"About two months. I was really excited about it and then it dawned on me - 'Yay, I've got the part. Oh God, that means I've got to move to Sydney'. I didn't want to move out of home, but I thought it could be good for me to move out and I knew I wouldn't be up there forever. It was a good experience." "Now that I've finished on Home & Away and moved back home, I think I appreciate being home a lot more."

Did you worry about doing a soap after Kylie's success in Neighbours? Were you expecting to cop a lot of flack from the media?

"Not really. I didn't lose any sleep over it. Joining Home & Away was something I thought would be good for me at the time. I knew I could learn from it, develop my acting skills. "I've learnt from each acting role that I've had and from the people that I've worked with."

Who did you learn a lot from?

"Judy Nunn and Ray Meagher were great. They played Ailsa and Alf, my mum and uncle, and I had most of my first scenes with them. The whole time that I'd been in the show all my big emotional scenes were with Judy. Her aunt was like a home base for Emma, she was a tearaway and she'd do terrible things and come back to Ailsa and go, 'Oh, I've done the wrong thing then, haven't I?' and she'd say, 'Yes, and this is what you should do'."

Who did you enjoy working with most?

"I don't know. It's hard to say because you got good scenes written with everyone. I had some great scenes with Nana Coburn who played Vicki, we had some good bitchy fighting scenes together! When I first came into the show, when Emma was a punk, I also had some great scenes with Nicole Dickson."

Did you know any of the cast before you joined the show?

"I knew Craig McLachlan fairly well, but he didn't join Home & Away till just before I left. He was good to work with, he has just so much bounding energy. Sometimes he's hard to keep up with but he's good to give you energy."

What were some of the funniest things that happened on set?

"When things went wrong it was fairly funny. At the time you say to yourself, 'I know I'll look back on this and laugh'. When we were doing scenes at the beach and it was so windy and freezing and all blotchy and we'd have lines to say like, 'What a beautiful day. Let's go for a swim'." "The funniest thing happened in one of my first scenes. In the beginning Emma was really arrogant and punk and in every scene she would slam the door when she walked in or out. It was like a classic thing with Emma. So I walked in and I slammed the door and everything fell off the wall on the set. It was my second or third scene and I was so embarrassed and scared and so nervous about what everyone would say, but everyone just packed up laughing. It was sort of good it happened because it broke the ice with everyone."

"Also, there are seats in the diner that always fall off the table. If you have a scene where you're packing up at the end of the day and putting them on the table, they just slide off. I had a scene where the chair was meant to slide off the table, but do you think it would slide off? No. We were running out of time and we had to get these scenes done urgently. We must have done five takes before the chairs fell off the table, and when they did they went down like dominoes! They're metal and they make the loudest noise so they couldn't use that take because all you hear is CRASH! I think the sound guy listening to it just blew his eardrums out..."