Actress, presenter & storyteller
Every December, thousands of actors up and down the country squeeze into tights, learn where the trough is, and prepare to be slapped in the face by a wet sponge. I've done ten panto seasons. This is everything I wish someone had told me before the first one.
I'm from Essex. Genuinely,properly, chippy-tea-on-a-Thursday Essex. And yet roughly four times a year, a casting director hears my tape and books me as 'Northern, unspecified'. Here's how I stopped fighting it and started cashing the cheques.
Every actor's CV has at least one fib lurking in the 'special skills' section. Mine involved a crossbow, a plaster cast and a very patient horse named Kevin.
Northern, Welsh, Scottish and Brummie actors are still told to 'neutralise' for the big roles — while audiences up and down the country fall in love with the very voices the industry keeps apologising for.
Somewhere between Dalston and a near-miss with a pram, I've memorised some of the best lines of my career. Here's my hard-won survival guide to cramming scripts into the least glamorous corners of British life — plus the apps, mnemonics and disasters every actor knows too well.
Once upon a time you'd trek across town, sit in a beige corridor with forty other versions of yourself, and pray. Now the audition happens in your front room with the washing machine humming in the background. Sophie gets misty-eyed about the old ways — but isn't quite ready to give the ring light back.
From a disastrous Belfast audition to the RP lilt my nan now finds 'a bit much', my voice has been colonised by every character I've ever played. Here's what happens when the accent won't clock off.
Before anyone knew my name, I spent six months as a supporting artiste on soaps, panel shows and period dramas — and it taught me more about telly than three years of training. A fond, slightly frostbitten look back at the unsung bottom rung of the ladder.
From hissing at Widow Twankey in a seaside pantomime to making soap viewers throw their remotes, I've built a career on being thoroughly unlikeable. Here's why British audiences secretly adore a proper baddie — and why the hate mail is my favourite post.
Casting directors have sent me some properly odd things over the years — including a compliment about my 'willingness to look older' that I still think about in the shower. Here's a tour through my inbox of heartbreak, and what it taught me about bouncing back.
No rehearsal room, no costume department, no dialect coach — just me, my London flat and a major TV role to prepare for. Here's how I actually got job-ready from my kitchen, including the line-learning hack that changed everything.
From Victoria Wood's comic genius to a northern antihero who scared the telly remote out of my hand, these are the characters that planted the acting bug — and the one that nearly stamped it out for good.