{"id":208220,"date":"2025-10-12T20:10:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-12T20:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/208220\/"},"modified":"2025-10-12T20:10:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T20:10:07","slug":"actor-eve-myles-looks-back-early-on-i-was-told-i-wasnt-the-typical-leading-lady-now-i-realise-my-idiosyncrasies-are-what-make-me-authentic-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/208220\/","title":{"rendered":"Actor Eve Myles looks back: \u2018Early on, I was told I wasn\u2019t the typical leading lady. Now I realise my idiosyncrasies are what make me authentic\u2019 | Family"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eve Myles in 1981 and 2025, sitting at a table full of party food<\/a>Eve Myles in 1981 and 2025. Later photograph: P\u00e5l Hansen\/The Guardian. Styling: Andie Redman. Hair and makeup: Bethany Long. Archive image: courtesy of Eve Myles<\/p>\n

Born in 1978 in Ystradgynlais, Wales, actor Eve Myles trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama before landing her first major role as Ceri Lewis in the\u00a0BBC Wales drama Belonging, which ran from 2000 to 2009. She became a\u00a0mainstream name playing Gwen Cooper in Torchwood, the BBC\u2019s Doctor Who<\/a> spin-off, from 2006 to 2011, and later won acclaim for her lead performance as Faith Howells in the thriller Keeping Faith\/Un Bore Mercher. She lives in Cardiff with her husband, the actor Bradley Freegard, and their three daughters. She stars in ITV\u2019s drama series The Hack this autumn.<\/p>\n

This photo, taken at my third birthday party, reveals that I was brought up on\u00a0pork-based foods. For this special occasion, it was sausage rolls and chipolatas on sticks \u2013 very posh, and the marker of any good celebration. My mother had obviously gone to town\u00a0on that icing to hide the atrocity of the sponge cake that was buried under there. I would have been high as\u00a0a kite after taking one bite.<\/p>\n

At this age I was an extrovert, a\u00a0storyteller and a thief. My parents had\u00a0to employ a slew of babysitters, because every time one would come over, something would go missing from her bag and she wouldn\u2019t want to\u00a0come back. It was always the same thing: lipstick. I was obsessed with it, even though I couldn\u2019t even say the word. I\u2019d say \u201ctriple click\u201d instead.<\/p>\n

My\u00a0mother would always find it stashed underneath my bed or stuffed inside a pillowcase. I\u2019d pretend that I\u00a0had no idea what it was, even though I\u2019d have come downstairs, having also stolen eyeshadow and blusher from Mum, and appeared nonchalantly in\u00a0front of my family fully done up, looking like a clown. Mum would subtly say: \u201cHave you put a little bit of\u00a0makeup on, Eve?\u201d I would reply: \u201cNo, no, nothing at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

This went on for a while. Mum would often get a phone call from the\u00a0teachers at school, saying: \u201cEve\u2019s gone to use the toilet and come back looking like she\u2019s ready for a night out in Swansea.\u201d Everyone allowed it, so\u00a0eventually I must have got bored and the fixation did die down. For a\u00a0long time, I just couldn\u2019t resist the kind of transformation and creativity that makeup gave me. Maybe I was partly inspired by Mum \u2013 she was a\u00a0glamorous woman, and I wanted to\u00a0be like her. Mainly, I just liked wearing a mask, which is what I now do for a living. It must have been my\u00a0destiny screaming out.<\/p>\n

My parents separated about six months after this was taken, and I was brought up by my mum predominantly. I grew up in a miners\u2019 village, in a community where the door is always open. The entire town looked after each other. It\u00a0was a luscious place to live \u2013 not in a\u00a0monied, extravagant way, but full of\u00a0decent, kind people. There was nothing there, just a lovely river, so\u00a0I\u00a0found escapism in culture. I\u00a0remember going to see Starlight Express in London when I was a kid \u2013 it\u00a0was my first experience in the theatre and I felt as if someone had turned on a switch and set me alight. There was this heat from inside out. Mike\u2019s Video Store also fuelled the fire.\u00a0Mum would get a video out every Friday, and she and I would watch it\u00a0twice the first night and twice on Saturday. I would watch it twice again\u00a0on my own on Sunday. I was captivated by the arts and always felt\u00a0this yearning to see the world outside my village.<\/p>\n

The three-year-old me is always tapping me on the shoulder, going: ‘Isn\u2019t this great? Aren\u2019t you lucky?’<\/p>\n

I had an amazing teacher at school, an actor called Hazel Williams. One day she said: \u201cFancy auditioning for the Welsh youth theatre?\u201d I thought it\u00a0was in a pub, but after some research realised the magnitude of what was on\u00a0offer. Acting hadn\u2019t been top of the\u00a0agenda because it seemed so out of\u00a0reach. I dabbled with wanting to be\u00a0a\u00a0speech therapist for a long time, or\u00a0to go into the police or midwifery. But after a while, the enormity of the dream ended up being frightening \u2013 the fear of failing was too much to admit. Luckily, as well as Hazel, Dave\u00a0Bond from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama reassured me that, no matter where I came from, I belonged. They both impressed on me the message: \u201cThis industry is for anybody. If you work hard, you can stay in it, but you\u2019ve got to respect it.\u201d So that\u2019s what I did because, really, acting was my first love.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never been a fan of the audition process. If they reworded it to \u201ca\u00a0workshop\u201d it might feel less intimidating. But, fortunately, I was able to bypass my nerves and I started working as an actor in my second year. It was a blessing in a way, because me and Mum had already talked about our financial situation and we realised that we couldn\u2019t afford to keep me living the student life for the whole of the three years at university. Having an\u00a0income was brilliant \u2013 it meant I\u00a0was out of my overdraft, I wasn\u2019t constantly owing rent, and I could buy\u00a0books. An opportunity at the Royal Shakespeare Company arrived, then everything changed when I met Russell T Davies. He gave me the role\u00a0of Gwyneth in Doctor Who<\/a> and then wrote Gwen Cooper for me in Torchwood. It was as if my whole world opened up.<\/p>\n

I had a good start in my career, but\u00a0I\u00a0wish I\u2019d known that whatever I\u00a0thought my imperfections were, I\u00a0should celebrate them rather than try\u00a0to change them. I wasn\u2019t the typical telly leading lady and I got told\u00a0that early on in my career after auditions. But now I realise all of my idiosyncrasies are exactly what makes me different and authentic. I worry there\u2019s a struggle in this industry for perfection. All the way through my 20s, I was frightened of getting things wrong and had so many comments from people in the industry that would affect me, a lot of it focused on looks.<\/p>\n

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I\u2019m still not the typical leading lady,\u00a0but I get to play some good ones.\u00a0Tough people. I\u2019m not a fan of confrontation and am far more gentle than the characters I tend to play. Often they take a while to shed, like Fran in [BBC drama] The Guest<\/a>. She\u2019s seven different people in one scene \u2013 powerful, scary, cutting, childlike, adolescent, vulnerable, then back into\u00a0an assassin. At the end of a day of\u00a0filming, I would come to the kitchen island and stare into space until Brad put a big fat glass of red wine in front of me and told me to cut it out and have a bath.<\/p>\n

Running helps me to decompress from the intensity of a character; plus,\u00a0there\u2019s nothing like having a 15-, 11- and three-year-old at home to pull you back into the present. From the outside, I\u2019m often trying to appear in\u00a0control, but I\u2019m kicking like hell under the surface.<\/p>\n

Despite the juggle of family and work, I will never not be ecstatically happy with my lot. That\u2019s because the three-year-old me is always tapping me on the shoulder, going: \u201cIsn\u2019t this great? Aren\u2019t you lucky? Don\u2019t take it\u00a0for granted and try to enjoy every second of it.\u201d I work with people who\u00a0inspire me, and I\u2019ll never not be profoundly grateful that I get to put a\u00a0mask on every day. Thankfully, now it\u2019s considered a career, not a crime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eve Myles in 1981 and 2025, sitting at a table full of party foodEve Myles in 1981 and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208221,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-208220","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}