"I was trying my hardest not to cry - I'm an ugly crier," Ruth Ratcliffe said.
"It came out of my eyes and my nose."
The Malcam Trust youth worker was one of 10 people working in the country's prisons to win a Corrections Volunteer Award.
Mrs Ratcliffe said Monday's ceremony during which she received her award was "a bit overwhelming".
The accolade was made more emotional for the recipient when staff showed her the letter an inmate had written nominating her for the award.
"I thought they got something out of it but I didn't realise how much," Mrs Ratcliffe said.
The former soap actress from The Bill, Grange Hill and Prime Suspect, started work at the Otago Corrections Facility in 2011, the year she moved from the UK.
But her route was somewhat winding.
Mrs Ratcliffe began as a facilitator working in the drug treatment unit before becoming a case manager for Corrections.
There she found herself drowning in paperwork.
She has been with the Malcam Trust since 2014 and running the prison drama programme with unwavering enthusiasm.
"I started to get my soul back," she said.
What was the secret to persuading a bunch of prisoners to open up, to be vulnerable?
"You do silly stuff. You allow everyone to feel as silly as one another," Mrs Ratcliffe said.
"You allow them to play ... Some of our men have never had that opportunity when they were a kid."
Acting behind bars was not just a way to keep the men entertained.
Mrs Ratcliffe said many in her class were equipped to make a living on screen or stage because of the lives they had led.
"They're coming from a place where they've experienced it - they've done it," she said.
Not one to slouch into self-satisfaction, she was looking to the future and plans of a theatre company made up of prisoners and ex-prisoners, taking their message to at-risk communities.
Many of the prisoners she had encountered were natural risk-takers and this might have been what landed them in prison in the first place, she said.
"But if you can do it in a positive way, how awesome is that?"
During the last financial year, volunteers made more than 18,000 visits to prisons nationwide, Corrections said. They offered prisoners support with literacy and numeracy education, art, drama, sewing, knitting, life skills, cooking, budgeting, hobbies, fitness, reintegration and cultural and religious services.
