 Virginia Stride was, in her own words, a "fat little girl" and, although she became slimmer in her teens, her self-consciousness about this in childhood had apparently made her sceptical of an acting career.In the event she went to RADA rather than read English at university, and took her husband's name for professional purposes because of pressure from agents who felt that Virginia Thomas "didn't sound quite right".Virginia Stride played the recurring role of BD Girl Katy Hoskins in "Z-Cars" (1962–64), the long-running BBC television series about the police in an area of Liverpool.