Rain Pryor had a head start when it came to playing her heroine Billie Holiday in a gritty stage show.

Her father, US comic and actor Richard Pryor, played Piano Man in 1972 Holiday biopic Lady Sings the Blues, starring Diana Ross, and Rain grew up listening to jazz and blues.

"I became a real Billie fan, I trawled around for memorabilia. I had the cufflinks, everything!" says Rain. "I was in love with Judy Garland too but being a black Jewish girl I didn't stand much chance of ever playing her!

"When my dad played Piano Man I thought he knew Billie Holiday. He loved jazz and blues, both my parents did."

Rain is starring in The Billie Holiday Story, a no-holds-barred show about the legendary jazz singer's life. Set to Billie's music, it's a journey from her grim childhood in downtown Baltimore to the lively jazz clubs of 1930s/40s New York where she made her name.

Rain plays Billie from her teenage years to her death, aged 44, after a lifetime of alcoholism and drug abuse. She was a complex woman, the product of a damaged childhood. The grand-daughter of a black slave, she was raped at the age of ten and sent to a Catholic reform school before working with her mother as a prostitute.

Billie used recreational drugs most of her life, smoking marijuana from the age of 13, and was later arrested and imprisoned for heroin possession.

"It looks like a harrowing childhood but it was very typical of the way a lot of black families lived in America," says Rain. "They did what they did to get by. My father grew up in a brothel, it was where his mother worked and it was normal for him.

"Billie was complicated and her drug use and destructive relationships were linked to her early life. I have a theory that she was slowly killing herself her whole life. Some people kill themselves outright, others do it slowly."

Rain drew on her father's drug addiction - he famously set himself on fire while freebasing cocaine - to play Billie.

"Watching someone who is addicted helped me approach this role," says Rain. "It's a challenge playing someone from a wide-eyed kid to a middle-aged Diva - and there's no prosthetic make-up! Billie's an iconic figure who lived her life very openly, you have to approach this show with honesty. I didn't want to be an imitation of her, this is my interpretation.

"Billie wasn't a trained singer and didn't have the greatest voice in the world but she told a story through song, she had expression in her voice, and that's what touches people. Her songs are what you listen to if you're feeling sad, or having a last drink late at night."

Just as Billie was a storyteller through song, much of Richard Pryor's stand-up material drew on his own life experiences and he was famed for his colourful language, vulgarities and examinations of racism.

In Strange Fruit, Billie sang about racism in the South at a time when such subjects weren't tackled in mainstream music. Radio stations banned the song and she was targeted by the FBI.

"My dad had FBI files on him too, because of his comedy," says Rain. "In the time of revolutionary cultural change in 1940s, 50s and 60s America anyone speaking out against racism, slavery, politics in the white mainstream had the FBI on them. It was expected that black communities sang about racism, but it hadn't appeared in the white music scene before Strange Fruit.

"Drug use was more open back then than and because Billie was a black singer it was kind of expected."

Billie was discovered in New York by John Hammond, who organised her first recording session with Benny Goodman in 1933. She went on to record more than 200 songs.

The show blends live performances of Billie's songs, set to a big band, with film footage. Characters such as Ella Fitzgerald and Paul Robeson help set the scene.

For Rain, it's a welcome return to working with a cast after performing a series of one-woman shows. She's appeared at the Edinburgh Festival in her sell-out solo show Fried Chicken and Latkes and made her London singing debut last year.

Her first TV role, in 1989, was as TJ in hit American series Head of the Class then she starred opposite Lynn Redgrave in Rude Awakening. Other US TV credits included Chicago Hope, appearing with her father, and her movies include The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. She's an outspoken campaigner for more research into Multiple Sclerosis, the disease that took her father's life.

As well as being an actor and singer Rain's a comic - she appeared on stage with her father - and a writer. Now she plans to get her autobiography, Jokes My Father Never Taught MeLife, Love and Loss with Richard Pryor, made into a film.

"I don't want to do just another biopic, I'd like it to be about my father through the eyes of his children," she says. "The Richard Pryor we knew wasn't the same man everyone saw on stage and in movies.

"He taught me that whatever life throws at you, humour gets you through it. Just the other night someone in the cast was telling me a real tragic story and I started laughing because I saw something funny in it. I said: That's such a Pryor thing to do'."

The Billie Holiday Story is at City Varieties, Leeds, on June 3. For tickets ring 08456 441881.