2 guys in a car threw a liquid at this lad. His clothes were melting and people just stood filming on phones
ACID VICTIM ON REAL-LIFE HORROR
ble. It’s like nothing I have ever felt. can’t even comprehend, but I knew ght away that it was acid.” illips, 48 at the time, was jailed for n 2015. Andreas has praised the soap ot shying away from the issue. says: “It is refreshing to see a soap r this storyline with so much arch and thought. A lot of people e it encourages copycat attacks, but ally by not showing that these things appening, we are just burying our s in the sand. spent a lot of time talking to the rchers, scriptwriters and producers. ught the scene of the attack was realistic. It is not easy to act that. yone reacts completely differently.” llowing the attack on Ross, viewers him become the subject of a cruel k by a girl he believed was chatting up. After leading him on, she aled she was only talking to him to a bet with her friends. chael says: “Ross isn’t dealing with gs very well. He’s been drinking and self-medicating, not taking care of himself or his skin. Alcohol dries your skin and that’s led to an infection on his face, he’s just wanting more painkillers. It just tipped him over the edge.”
This week Ross con-tinues to suffer from his ordeal and is still hellbent on getting justice.
The storyline is a challenge, but it is clearly one Michael is up for.
It was obvious from an early age that he was going to pursue an acting career. The star says he was “cheeky” and easily distracted at school, partly due to dyslexia.
Michael says: “I don’t read books well because I don’t retain the information; I’m concentrating on getting the words right.
“But give me a script and I’m great. I think it’s the way you train your brain. I am a listener, I love my podcasts.” He adds: “I’m not using being dyslexic as an excuse for not doing well at school. I was immature and easily distracted.
“If I could go back in time, I’d have studied for my GCSEs harder and hope I could concentrate a bit better. I was cheeky and knew how to make people laugh, but I also knew what I wanted to be.”
Michael jokes: “I was probably that smug pupil who was like, to teachers, ‘Well, I won’t need me maths. I’m gonna be an actor’.
“But now I get the tax bill and I don’t know what I’m doing. So it could’ve been useful.” Luckily, his acting career took off. He starred briefly in Hollyoaks before his Emmerdale role.
Michael goes on: “There’s so much pressure on teenagers now to know what you want to do at that age, but then you still have to put your hand up to go to the toilet.
“Just because you do bad at school, it doesn’t mean you won’t [do well] in life. But I wasn’t so bad at school that the teachers thought I was a write-off.
“I think they could see that I was always going to do acting, it was what I was always better at.”
Yet the actor is modest when it comes to fame. “I’d never say I am famous, I’d say I am recognisable,” he says, “because you always see my ugly mug on the cover of magazines and on the TV.
“A lot of people don’t know where they know me from and they sometimes just say hello. I get a few people who say to me when I am walking down the street, ‘You’re a wrong’un, you’, referring to Ross. They’re lovely, really.”
Michael is extremely grateful to his fans and doesn’t find it at all strange when they follow him around the country. He even posted a selfie with one hardcore fan on Instagram.
He wrote: “This is little Laura. She’s a diehard Emmerdale fan and goes everywhere the show goes. This morning I wrote on Twitter that I was on the radio and she showed up outside with a belated Xmas present for me. Thank you Laura. God bless ya x.”
But the star says he can’t escape the trolls on social media.
“You can’t post anything these days without people saying nasty things, people were saying it was weird. It’s not weird at all, she’s the loveliest little girl you will ever meet.
“I present on the radio in Manchester every now and then, and she had a little box of chocolates for me. She’s so sweet.”
He adds: “The fans are so loyal, they’re always there. We can’t ignore them, they’re responsible for the success of the show and I love having jokes and interacting with them online.”
Emmerdale is on ITV weekdays, 7pm.
People either stare or ignore you... and that is just me in make-up. It must be hard for victims