SINGING sensation Danielle Hope has hung up her ruby slippers as she prepares to star in West End favourite Les Miserables.

The Urmston teenager found fame in 2010 when she won BBC talent show Over The Rainbow.

The 19-year-old beat 9,000 other girls to be cast as Dorothy in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s adaption of the Wizard of Oz at the London Palladium.

After dazzling audiences with some 400 performances over 12 months, Danielle is now preparing to take on the part of Eponine in Les Mis, a show based on the novel by Victor Hugo that has been running for 26 years.

She said: “I’m really excited. I turn 20 next month and I felt it was a good time to move on, just like any job.

“A lot of the Over The Rainbow process was televised and for Les Miserables I auditioned in the normal way like everyone else in this industry so I really feel like I got the part on my own merit.”

Danielle finished her run on Over the Rainbow in February and went through four gruelling Les Mis auditions to bag the role of tomboy Eponine, meeting one of the show’s original directors John Caird along the way.

She added: “To be part of such as iconic show is amazing but I will never forget Over The Rainbow and all the amazing support I had from the public and from my home town.

“I’ll always cherish my memories of it, it was an incerdible experience and I’m extremely thankful for it.

“Other shows I’d love to do in future are Phantom Of The Opera, My Fair Lady and Mary Poppins.”

Rehearsals are set to start on May 14 with Danielle, a former Knutsford High School pupil, making her first appearance in the musical, which is set in France in the 1800s, at the Queen’s Theatre on June 18.

She said: “It’s a very different role to Dorothy and I can’t wait to get stuck in. I feel so fortunate that I’m doing what I want to do for the rest of my life.”