From glamour girl to leading lady (From The Argus)

From glamour girl to leading lady

6:00am Saturday 16th January 2010

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If you’d listened carefully, you might have heard a collective groan from her male fans when it emerged Gemma Atkinson would not be taking her clothes off for the Chichester stage production of Calendar Girls.

The show has proved something of a watershed for the former glamour model and Hollyoaks princess, marking the start of a return to acting and a new-found dedication to the smell of the greasepaint and roar of the crowds.

In fact, now the publicity shots for the show have been taken, the days of FHM’s erstwhile 18th sexiest woman in the world shedding her clothes for the camera look set to be finished entirely.

“I did the modelling for about three years, but acting is what I really want to do,” the 25-year-old explains.

“Me and my agent were very realistic and realised the modelling was good for now, but there’s no future there, and if I wasn’t enjoying it I needed to close the door on that for good and concentrate on this.”

She admits turning down lucrative contracts has been tough, but says the non-material rewards have made it worthwhile.

“It was really scary at first because modelling was what I’d become known for. It kind of took over the Hollyoaks role, so I’ve been really lucky to get back to Gemma Atkinson, actress, and I think a lot of that is down to David Pugh, who cast me in Calendar Girls.”

Atkinson plays ditzy make-up artist Elaine in the show and has already worked alongside the likes of Jerry Hall and June Brown for its West End run. This time around, she’ll be joined by Lynda Bellingham and Letitia Dean as Calendar Girls heads out on tour, and says she’s already learnt a great deal from her more experienced colleagues in the West End.

“Anita Dobson was really helpful to me – she taught me a lot about projecting my voice onstage and how to stand.

Jill Halfpenny was incredible; she was doing the show and she had a little boy running around and still managed to do it. Jerry Hall is an amazing woman who taught me how to be elegant.”

It was Brighton’s own Calendar Girl who would prove to be one of Atkinson’s biggest inspirations, however.

“June Brown is like Superwoman – she was the only person who didn’t have any time off during the whole run and if anything went wrong she just got up and dealt with it. Off-stage she was lovely – she was like my nan.”

Atkinson’s determination to move back into acting seems to be paying off; switching the photoshoots for a fresh round of drama courses and voice coaching has earned her roles in three films, one of which – a horror flick called 13 Hours – reaches cinemas in the summer.

“It’s breathtaking, really,” she says.

“Because we’d done the film last summer, it was quite a shock to find out I was actually going to be in the cinema. But it was incredible seeing how they built this huge set. We had a werewolf chasing us, so we had a stuntman as the werewolf doing all the moves.”

Atkinson won’t say if she becomes one of the film’s victims, but says: “It’s very surprising, put it that way.”

The rigours of making a feature-length film were business as usual for a woman who, from 14, was on set in the early hours each day to film her scenes as the shy and sensitive Lisa Hunter in teen soap Hollyoaks.

“It did prepare me for what work and long days are from a young age,” she says.

“I was up at 6am, in make-up for 7.30am, working until 8pm and then coming back home and fitting in my GCSEs and home tutoring. Now when someone says ‘It’s an early start, you have to be in at 9am’, I think it’s amazing. I think I’ve been very lucky.”

Moving yet further away from her perception as a chirpy, sweet young thing is her immediate ambition, she explains, and the hope is she will take on grittier roles as her career progresses. She’s realistic, however, about how tough it will be to shake off her perception as a glamour model. Atkinson has been the subject of tabloid and gossip mag tittle-tattle in the past, not least because of the breast augmentation surgery she underwent in 2006, boosting her bust to a 34E. Did anyone try to talk her out of it?

“My mum. She didn’t try to persuade me not to, but she was dubious about me going under anaesthetic when it wasn’t necessary. I’d lost so much weight before then, and obviously with girls it goes from your breasts and bum first, and I just wasn’t happy with them.

“My mum said ‘Just try to deal with it’, and I did for about two or three months, and then said ‘Look, I’m really unhappy’. As soon as she knew I wasn’t changing my mind she changed hers and completely supported me. She was there throughout the whole thing.”

Having grown up in front of the cameras, Atkinson had to learn about the nature of fame and the attention of the public while still in her teens. It’s a case of once bitten, twice shy when it comes to her private life, it seems.

“I don’t think you can go into this business without people wanting to know certain things. You can try to stop it but you never will, so I just try to work around it. If you go to The Ivy every night you’re going to get photographed, but I haven’t moved down to London. I’ve stayed in the town I was born in with my friends and family. When I do go out, it’s down to the local pub where everyone knows each other, so I like to keep things a bit private, really.

“I wouldn’t do the whole OK shoot with my boyfriend explaining what we do and where we go on holiday and stuff like that. I don’t mind talking about myself and work, but I’ve made the mistake in the past of speaking about my relationship and it broke down, so I learnt my lesson early on.”

After a much talked-about link with premiership football star Cristiano Ronaldo, Atkinson says she aims to keep a “very happy, secure”

relationship with martial arts expert and Britain’s Got Talent star Liam Richards as private as possible, and says she’s looking forward to spending some time with him as the Calendar Girls reaches his hometown of Sheffield on her first tour with a production.

So what’s next for Atkinson? 2010 will see her continue her running. She’s already completed a gruelling series of challenges for charities including the Teenage Cancer Trust and Breast Cancer Awareness, and she’ll be taking part in the Bupa Manchester Great Run in May.

On the acting front, the US beckons, as it does for so many homegrown stars, and she’ll be heading out with her agent to New York in the spring to see what the Big Apple’s television industry has to offer.

In the meantime, however, she will be immersing herself in the rather more British institution that is the WI, and a new cast of Calendar Girls.

“People presume that because it’s a show full of girls there’s going to be loads of fall-outs, but I’ve found it the complete opposite really,” she says.

“Everyone leans on each other and helps each other out because it’s so daunting to take your clothes off.”

* Calendar Girls will be at Chichester Festival Theatre from Wednesday, January 27 until Saturday, February 6. Call 01243 781312.

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