Adam and Eve it... I sounded like a right Cockney
TAMZIN Outhwaite had to watch old episodes of EastEnders to remind herself how strong her Cockney accent would have to be when she returned.
The 47-year-old actress, who is back as Mel Owen after 15 years, says: “I’d forgotten just how Cockney I used to sound. “I watched all my key episodes on YouTube, just to try to remember. “I realised that I really liked Mel. I’d forgotten how much. She’s quite funny, and tells it very straight.” Tamzin left the show in 2002, when Mel skipped bail and headed off to start a new life in Portugal. Some viewers think Mel was behind the gun heist on New Year’s Day that saw one of the cast shot . Others involved in the heist talked of working for a woman boss.
Tamzin says: “She’s older, wiser, funnier, a bit more cynical and a lot more damaged than she was. When I first arrived, she was the girl next door.
“In the 15 years she’s been away, an awful lot more has happened.”
Speaking to Woman’s Own, Tamzin reveals she finds it too difficult to watch herself on TV these days.
She says: “As you begin to get older, you start criticising the wrong things, like what you look like, instead of what your acting’s like.
“I treat a telly job like it’s a theatre job. You don’t watch yourself back in theatre.”