That brief history might give you some idea as to why I responded the way I did when my mum picked me up from school one day when I was 15 and, instead of taking me to the dentist like she’d said, took me to a modelling agency. ‘No way! ABSOLUTELY NOT!’ I roared as we pulled up. Which is exactly what she’d known I’d do, which is why she’d kept it secret. Me? Modelling? I’d got hairy legs and didn’t own a single lipstick. I lived in trackies and dungarees. ‘Listen, a few people have seen family photos of you and said I should enrol you here. You never know what it’ll lead to,’ she said, ushering me in, while I mentally prepared my escape route.
So we turned up at Manchester Modelling Agency (MMA) and I genuinely couldn’t believe I was there rather than at home on my Playstation. Surprisingly, bearing in mind the confused, gormless look on my face, the agency signed me up. They took some photos, made me a portfolio and sent us on our way. I didn’t think anything more about it. Then, about a month later, they called saying there was a casting for Hollyoaks. The soap was looking for a grumpy schoolgirl called Lisa Hunter and the agency thought I’d be a great fit! Charming. But I did the audition and two hours later they told me I’d got the job.
And that’s where it all started, and I’ve got my mum to thank for everything! She was spot on. I loved it as soon as I did it. But had she told me her idea before arriving at MMA, I wouldn’t have gone. All the things I’ve done and achieved in my life resulted from that very first audition which I got because my mum believed in me. Thanks, Mum!
Calendar girls
I’d never acted properly before. Drama classes at school mostly consisted of sitting in the common room chatting for an hour a week. I’d also never even seen Hollyoaks! When I got the job, my family and friends were way more excited than I was, saying, ‘Oh! You’re going to get to work with Gary Lucy and James Redmond!’ while I had no idea who they were. I didn’t realise it was a big deal. It was only after the show came out and people started stopping me on the street asking if I was on the TV that I thought, ‘Ah okay, people other than my mates watch this’.
I did an acting course before shooting my first scene and found the whole thing exciting, but I think being so young made me quite blasé about it. Mum wouldn’t let me extend the initial contract until I’d passed my GCSEs though, so I got the grades I needed to study sports therapy, which is what I’d always wanted to do, then I signed up to Hollyoaks full-time for a year. That ended up turning into seven altogether; five on the main show and two on the spin-offs Hollyoaks: Let Loose and Hollyoaks: In the City.
Chilling with my dad. I always felt safe up there on his shoulders
Rocking my one-piece in Tenerife. I’m fuming because Mum made me cut my hair short the week before
Helping Dad build our back fence! I was probably getting right in his way, right under his feet and right on his nerves, but still he always let me help
Fifth year of high school in my PE kit. My fringe hair-sprayed within an inch of its life!
My first BMX. I fell off at least 20 times in the first week learning to do wheelies… But I always got back on!
I always joke with my friends now that it’s a good job social media wasn’t around when we were at school. I didn’t have that extraordinary pressure young people face now to look a certain way. I remember the first moment I ever felt truly insecure about how I looked: when we shot a Hollyoaks calendar in Ibiza when I was 17, I was with beautiful women who were two or three years older than me, were quite slim and also more physically developed, like the lovely Sarah Dunn who played Mandy, and Elize du Toit who played Izzy. When I saw the photos I thought, ‘Oh gosh, I don’t look like these other girls. I look heavier, my roots are quite bad, and my nails are all bitten’. They’d all had manicures and pedicures and their hair done, but, because I was young, I thought that’s just how they looked all the time. It didn’t occur to me that they had got their hair and nails done specially. It was the first time I really questioned my appearance.
Earlier that year, in April 2002, my dad passed away. It was, and still is, the single biggest thing that’s ever happened to me in my life and it hit me massively hard. While I didn’t go off the rails as such, I did stop looking after myself a bit. I’d think nothing of going out and sinking five shots of vodka of an evening. My friends and I would go out on Friday and Saturday nights drinking, have a McDonald’s on the Saturday and a Chinese takeaway on the Sunday. None of us would ever think, ‘I’m going to feel like crap tomorrow,’ or ‘We’re going to get fat’. We just did it. It’s only when I look back now that I realise, ‘that’s why my face was puffy, my skin used to break out, and why I didn’t sleep very well. I mean, we used to get a flight to Magaluf on a Friday, come back on Sunday and then head straight to work on the Monday. We weren’t on our phones trying to get our best angles to upload to Instagram, we just let ourselves be and we needed that. I needed that. That whole period was full of laughter and love.
But it all took its toll, meaning I definitely didn’t look my best when shooting that Hollyoaks calendar. It was, I think, my very first insight into what social media is now – being forced to compare myself to other women. I spent that whole week in Ibiza thinking, ‘This is so embarrassing. I look chubby, young and stupid.’ I even wondered if the press people would regret me being in it. Then, when it came to promotion, the agency said to me, ‘The Daily Star, The Sun and The Mirror all want to use your shot to advertise the calendar.’ My photo – out of all of them. I couldn’t believe it. Many of the papers did use my photo. Then, off the back of that, the agency said, ‘The response has been great. We want you to do your own calendar.’ So I shot my own, the whole time thinking, ‘Is anyone actually going to buy this?’ But then the lads’ mags picked up on it and it basically kick-started my modelling career. Which just goes to show, you know? I spent an entire week – and all the lead-up to the calendar being released – panicking about it. Panicking that I didn’t look right, that I was too big and un-groomed, too much of a tomboy; that I didn’t look like everyone else. Yet off the back of that I ended up shooting five or six of my own calendars. Something great came from a week of stressing over something that was all in my own head. It taught me that we never know the full story, that we can look at an Instagram post and think, ‘Oh, look at her with her perfect life’, not realising she’s spent the day doubled over with anxiety about something or other.
That was a big lesson for me – how comparing yourself to others can send you down a spiral of self-doubt. And, as my modelling career took off and papers and magazines started becoming interested in my personal life, I’d have a few more lessons coming my way…
The heartbreak diet
I started going to the gym when I was 20, but had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I’d run on the treadmill for half an hour every day and do some dumbbell curls and that was it. I’d also read somewhere that cutting out carbs was the thing to do, so I did that… and was always totally knackered. My skin turned grey, my hair stopped growing properly and I looked awful. I didn’t have a clue about training or nutrition, wasn’t getting the energy or nutrients I needed, and was just flogging my body on this treadmill. I lost a lot of weight quickly due to crash dieting and endless cardio and, as is often the case when that happens, my boobs were the first things