'Stacey' - why I nearly gave up acting

May 12 2008 by Abby Alford, Western Mail

ACTRESS Joanna Page has revealed how she was once told she was too ugly to be an actress.

The 31-year-old from Mumbles, Swansea, said the brutal nature of going from audition to audition – she was also dubbed too fat by a casting director – left her on the verge of quitting the profession.

But just weeks later she landed the role in Barry-based comedy Gavin and Stacey that would make her a household name.

“I’ve been told that my boobs are too small, that I’m too fat, too skinny or not curvy enough. I’ve been told that I’m too ugly. For one job my agent phoned and said: “They don’t think you’re pretty enough for it so can you go to Selfridges and go to Bobbi Brown and ask them to do a makeover on you and then go back and see if that will do it?”

Joanna, whose mother Sue and father Nigel, a mechanic, still live in Mumbles, has also told how knock- backs for jobs finally took their toll and two years ago she almost quit acting.

The final straw came when she went through gruelling auditions for West End musical Dirty Dancing, got down to the final two only to lose out.

“I just sobbed and sobbed,” said Joanna, who is married to actor James Thornton.

“I woke up next day and wandered around Leicester Square thinking: “What am I going to do with my life? I’m never ever going to work again.”

But she said: “Two weeks later the Gavin and Stacey script arrived. The rest as they say...”

But Joanna, whose next project is on the London stage in the comedy Fat Pig, said what matters most is that her family are proud of her work.