Hannah Waddingham is doing pretty well for herself these days. The English actress has been around for ages, even doing her British thespian duties by appearing on Game of Thrones. But it was Ted Lasso, in which she plays Rebecca Walton, that’s finally made her a big star. Now she has an Emmy and other trophies, plus a plum role in The Fall Guy. Heck, she even co-presented Eurovision’s grand final last year. But had she listened to a not very prophetic drama school teacher, she might not have had the nerve to go for it.
“I had one drama teacher that said to the whole class: ‘Oh, Hannah will never work on screen because she looks like one side of her face has had a stroke,’” Waddingham recalled during a recent appearance on the BBC Radio 2 podcast Michelle Visage’s Rule Breakers, as caught by Decider.
Though the comment “gave [her] a complex for years,” luckily it didn’t deter her. “I thought, I will do,” she recalled thinking. “Come hell or high water, I will work on screen.”
And so she did. In fact, she worked a ton, juggling both stage work — her theater credits include Spamalot; Kiss Me, Kate; and the Sondheims Into the Woods and A Little Night Music — and lots of TV.
“I used to knacker myself senseless,” she recalled. “I used to be doing a [theater] show at night and I used to literally take anything to get myself on screen.”
(Via Decider)