Vanessa Williams bases Desperate Housewives character on pip-squeak mum

The 47-year-old former Miss America, who has made a name for herself playing – as she says – 'strong and powerful and dangerous' women in hit TV shows Ugly Betty, South Beach and now Desperate Housewives, tells Ebony magazine that thinking of her mother's personality helped her to develop those roles.

'My mother has great posture,' Williams says of her retired schoolteacher mum, Helen Williams.

'She's a pip-squeak. She's 5ft tall. She walks in the room and takes control. She's always been the shortest one. But she's always been a fighter and a survivor.

“I took that courage that she has.'

But Williams is quick to point out that she is nothing like her famous on-screen characters.

She tells the US magazine: '[They are the] furthest from who I really am, but it is so much fun.

'Because I get a chance to say things that I never would have the guts to say to people in a room – not being condescending or putting people down or putting them in their place proper – but it sure is fun when it's not you that has to pay the consequences.'