The Independant interview Michelle Ryan on her Bionic rise to stardom.
When Ryan was 16, she aced an audition for EastEnders, and landed the role of Zoe Slater. How did that feel? Was she nervous? “No,” she says, “I’ve always been very mature. I’ve always been quite sensible, and always loved to work, and always been really dedicated.”
Ryan was on EastEnders from 2000 to 2005, when she was between the ages of 16 and 21. However professional a young actor you are, that is a hell of a time to be permanently in the public eye. Didn’t she ever want to rebel? Did she ever want to stay out late with friends, not turn up to filming the next day, or just jack the whole thing in?
“Not at first, no,” she says. “I took it all very seriously. When I wasn’t working I would take time out to work on an American accent with a dialect coach, or read a book on Stanislavsky.” But being so serious, says Ryan, led to some tough times. There were periods, on EastEnders, in which she became deeply depressed.
Working on Eastenders seemingly too more out of Michelle than it appeared at the time. To be ‘depressed’, perhaps says quite alot about how happy she was during her time on the show.
The atmosphere on set could also, she says, be poisonous. “Like any job, you’re not going to get on with every single person who works there,” says Ryan. “I think because there was so much press interest in EastEnders there was some tension. I’m not going to say it was a happy family all the time. It wasn’t. I did make some brilliant friends, though.”
Why was there tension? “It was partly people trying to get into the limelight,” says Ryan. “And partly because people were having stories sold about them the whole time. There were quite a lot of leaks at EastEnders – different people selling stories to newspapers. In the end, I was like: ‘Who can I trust?’
I think that most people do get the impression that the Eastenders cast are one big happy family.
“I actually felt really bad, because I always turned [the magazines] down. They’d say, ‘Why won’t you do it? We’ll fly you to the Maldives, we’ll give you Jimmy Choos!’ I said, ‘It’s really not about that.’” Ryan’s reticence, though, has only spurred them on – a couple of years ago, FHM voted her the fourth sexiest woman in the world.
Just as you will never see Ryan in her smalls, you are unlikely to see paparazzi pictures of her in the wee small hours. Like everything else in her career, her public persona is thoroughly considered.
“If you’re always in the press for reasons other than your acting,” she says, “it’s going to be even harder for you to get credibility. I’m naturally a private person anyway. I’d rather do my job and that’s that. It’s nice to go to events and get dressed up but if it becomes only about that, then you’re in it for the wrong reasons.”
Credit to her for that. It’s refreshing to see a young person so dedicated to their career. Of course no-one would begrudge her becoming distracted once in a while, but in a world of Lohan’s and wasted talent it’s nice to know that their are still some actors who put acting first and treat what comes with the fame as secondary.
Which brings us back to that phone call. Ryan didn’t ask her press officer to make it because she likes journalists, or because she had some newsworthy nugget to deliver. She asked because she has a work-rate that can only be described as bionic, and because the plan did not fit the execution. When Ryan goes after something, she does so with blood, sweat and tears. And, when she thinks she’s booked for 45 minutes, she wants 45 minutes.
Sounds like our perfect Bionic Woman! This is certainly one of the best and most revealing Michelle Ryan articles that I have read so far.
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