Hannah Waddingham says she was told her looks would ‘never work on screen’

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Hannah Waddingham revealed {that a} drama trainer told her that her looks “would never work on screen.”

The 49-year-old British actor – well-known for her function as Rebecca Welton in Ted Lasso – has loved an in depth profession on stage and display screen and can be a talented presenter, having co-hosted the Eurovision Song Contest in 2023.

Discussing her childhood on BBC Radio 2 podcast, Michelle Visage’s Rule Breakers, the theatre and TV actress mentioned: “I had one drama teacher that said to the whole class ‘Oh Hannah will never work on screen because she looks like one side of her face has had a stroke.’

“And I thought, I will do, I will do,” she told Visage. “Come hell or high water, I will work on screen and it gave me a complex for years. And this is why, in my Emmys speech, I made a point.”

She continued, “The one thing I said to myself, ‘If this weird moment comes and I get this award, and I get my foot in this door, I’m going to rip it off its hinges for musical theatre people or theatre people to follow’.”

Waddingham received an Emmy in 2021 for her function in comedy sequence Ted Lasso, and her speech included a shout-out to skilled musical theatre performers. In it, she mentioned: “West End musical theatre performers need to be on screen more. Please give them a chance because we won’t let you down.”

Also within the podcast, Waddingham mentioned the headmistress at her college had discouraged her from pursuing a profession within the arts when she refused to present her a reference.

“I remember saying to my headmistress… She said, ‘Oh, you’re bright enough to read drama’, and I said, ‘I don’t want to read drama I want to do drama,” she mentioned.

“She refused to give me a reference,” she continued. “So I managed, thank God, to get a scholarship for the drama school I went to and I walked back in, put it on her desk and left the room without shutting the door.”

Reflecting on her time at college, she added: “She (headmistress) was always dismissive of me, because it wasn’t that I wasn’t academic, I knew what I wanted to do.”“So it annoyed her that I turned my back on my academia,” she added. “She would purposely put everyone else in the school plays and have me understudy just to punish me.”

The Emmy award winner obtained the entertainer gong on the Glamour Women of the Year awards 2023 and over the festive interval she fronted her personal vacation particular and musical occasion, referred to as Hannah Waddingham: Home For Christmas, on the London Coliseum.

Waddingham additionally received the Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series gong on the Critics Choice Awards in 2022 for Ted Lasso and has made appearances in HBO fantasy sequence Game Of Thrones, Netflix sequence Sex Education and the ITV drama Tom Jones.

Michelle Visage’s Rule Breakers is accessible to take heed to on BBC Sounds.

Additional reporting by the Press Association