CARLY Beaver’s heart is set on becoming a star after winning a part in a West End smash hit.

The 11-year-old battled through eight rounds of auditions to win a speaking part for six months in the musical Billy Elliot at the Victoria Palace Theatre.

Carly, of Chilbridge Road Eynsham, said she couldn’t wait to start her first professional role in June and hoped it would be the start of a long career.

The Bartholomew School pupil said: “I’m just so excited. I’d just come out of school when my mum told me and I was jumping for joy.

“It’s taken a long time to get here, but it’s all been worth it.

“To be on the stage in the West End is a great experience. I’ll get to meet lots of new people.

“I really want to be an actress and make films in the future, and hopefully this is going to be a great way of doing that.”

Carly, who has only been dancing for the past three years at Fringford School of Dance, near Bicester, and Dance Connection in Wallingford, will play a classmate to the lead character, Billy Elliot, in three shows a week.

But the youngster said she had not let the news go to her head.

Carly, who will earn about £30 a show, said: “My friends are all really pleased for me, but I’m not bragging about it.”

Billy Elliot tells the story of an 11-year-old boy growing up in a fictional northern town during the miner’s strikes in the early 1980s.

Billy is drawn to ballet and wants to go to the Royal Ballet School, but has to hide his dreams from his overbearing father by pretending to go to boxing lessons.

Carly’s proud mum Shelley Beaver, 37, said: “When you see these people up on stage in the West End you have no idea how much work they have had to put in.

“We were having to travel up to London for the auditions and Carly was really trying her hardest. I’m just so pleased that it has all paid off for her — she deserves it.”

Mrs Beaver said she was now waiting for special permission from Oxfordshire County Council to remove Carly from school for the schedule of rehearsals in the run-up to her West End debut in June.

She added: “We are going to make sure she keeps up with her school work while she is away, but Carly will be able to take it. She really wants this and we are supporting her 100 per cent.”