Michelle Keegan: After Our Girl does Hollywood call?
WHEN Michelle Keegan quit Coronation Street after six years playing Weatherfield It Girl Tina McIntyre in 2014 she knew she was taking a risk.
On the Cobbles she was a member of a tight-knit acting family, had job security as one of the soap’s most popular characters and was living in her beloved North-west.
But this week her brave leap into the unknown paid off in spades. On Wednesday, BBC One screened the second episode of the new series of Our Girl, its hit army drama which stars Keegan as Lance Corporal Georgie Lane, a medic from Manchester, who is sent to the border of Kenya and Somalia on a humanitarian tour.
In the opening episode she and fellow medic Kicki were kidnapped by Al-Shabaab terrorists who threatened to kill her unless their captured comrades are released. The suspense generated as Georgie worked out an inventive way of alerting her team to her location proved to be compulsive viewing.
During the rescue operation Georgie was bundled into a helicopter by her masked saviours. It was only when Luke Pasqualino’s Special Forces officer Elvis Harte removed his disguise that she recognised him and rewarded him with a slap on the face and fumed all the way back to base.
For the uninitiated, Harte was the former lover who had deserted her at the altar two years earlier. Twitter lit up with rave reviews of Keegan’s performance.
Viewer Natalie Gill wrote: “I literally feel sick from the amount of adrenaline running through my body from Our Girl.”
Megan Middleton tweeted: “Don’t think I took a breath through that entire episode.”
Meanwhile, her husband Mark Wright was equally effusive: “Wow Wow Wow Our Girl, Unbelievable.”
Now critics are predicting a Hollywood future for the 29-year-old who worked as a make-up girl at Selfridges department store and then a check-in assistant at Manchester Airport before getting her big break on Corrie.
A post-school stint at the Manchester School of Acting paid off in 2008 when she beat 900 other hopefuls to land the part of Tina, and after her first season Keegan won an award for Best Newcomer and took the Sexiest Female gong from the British Soap Awards every year from 2009-13.
But the day her character was beaten to death with a lead pipe by ex-con Rob Donovan may prove to have been a turning point in her career.
Paul Pieterse, the Cape Town-based stunt co-ordinator on Our Girl, which was filmed in South Africa, reckons she is a megastar in the making.
“She’s a really big talent and a lot of people in this town are talking about her,” he said earlier this month.
“We have had 15 big foreign movies made here over the past few months – big stars like Sean Penn, Helen Mirren and Charlize Theron have all been here.
“Michelle’s going to make it big time, I am certain. Michelle for Hollywood, absolutely. The right part and she’s away. I am working with top Holly wood stars and she is of that calibre. I know good when I see it.”
Last summer she and Wright, 29, who made his name on reality TV show The Only Way Is Essex, flew to LA to schmooze the people who matter in Beverly Hills.
While Wright had meetings with major networks including CBS and NBC, Keegan visited top Hollywood agency Gersh, which has represented big names such as Kristen Stewart, Sharon Stone and Charlie Sheen.
She knows what she has to do to make it in Tinseltown, acknowledging earlier: “I’ve got a very strong Manchester accent and it can be easier to get a part if you can neutralise it. So I’m having one-to-one classes and dialect coaching for accents.
“I have always wanted to do a period drama – they’re so different to Corrie. I would love to do a film. I don’t want to look back on my life and think, ‘What if?’”
Some think she would be a shoo-in as a Bond girl. But it might help if Keegan got her private life in order. Despite her husband’s gushing tweets about Our Girl, barely a day goes by when there isn’t some speculation over the health of their year-old marriage.
Michelle Keegan says she would love to return to Our Girl role
The word is he’s keen to start a family but she wants to wait five years because she is determined to turbocharge her career first.
In June, Keegan regularly appeared without her £20,000 diamond-studded wedding band as she went out with pals in Manchester where she was filming Tina And Bobby, about England’s 1966 World Cup-winning captain Bobby Moore and his first wife.
Then Wright’s work as a DJ took him to Spanish resort Magaluf, dubbed “Shagaluf” due to its reputation, where he had an audience of hundreds of bikini-clad young women.
Despite the reports the actress insists all is fine.
“I am looking forward to a bit of downtime where I can catch up with myself, spend time with Mark and our families, have some lazy days walking the dogs, go shopping, visit friends, do some comfort food cooking at home,” she says.
Sounds like a great idea.