Martine McCutcheon

Martine McCutcheon mini-bio: Martine McCutcheon (born Martine Kimberley Sherri Ponting) is an English singer, television personality and Olivier award-winning actress. At the age of 12 McCutcheon obtained her first acting role and was paid £350 to appear in an American television commercial for the drink, Kool-Aid, which was followed by modelling assignments and bit parts in TV shows such as in the ITV police drama The Bill.[2] By the time she was 15, she had formed an all-girl band, 'Milan', with two fellow students and landed a record contract and a gig touring as the 'warm up' group for the British Boyband, East 17. Milan were reasonably successful. They entered the dance charts three times but were not successful enough for McCutcheon who didn't like playing in seedy clubs and she ended up leaving the group.

Her unwavering determination finally paid off in 1995 when, while working as a shopgirl at 'Knickerbox', McCutcheon was offered the small part of Tiffany Raymond on the popular BBC soap opera EastEnders. As McCutcheon received more exposure from the soap, press interest also increased, and what should have been a triumphant experience was marred in 1996 by a series of salacious stories sold to the press, first by her father and then by her boyfriend, Gareth Cooke. Despite this, the role of Tiffany grew, as did McCutcheon's popularity, and 22 million viewers tuned in to see her final scenes in Albert Square in 1998, when her character was killed in a special episode screened on New Years Eve. In reality McCutcheon had decided to quit the soap in order to embark on a pop career, and the death of her on-screen character was not viewed favourably by the actress. Since leaving the show she has publicly slammed Mal Young, the executive producer who made the decision to kill her character, for treating her unfairly and bringing her role to an end so irrevocably merely to punish her for quitting. In turn, Young has hit back at McCutcheon, saying that her anger only arose because she wanted him to keep her role in EastEnders open as a 'safety net' in case her pop career failed and he was not prepared to do this. McCutcheon has subsequently written an autobiography entitled Who Does She Think She Is?: My Autobiography , which depicts a less than favourable account of the producer.

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