Born in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, in 1975, actor Jill Halfpenny landed her breakout role as Nicola Dobson in Byker Grove at the age of 14. She has been a mainstay on TV screens since: starring in EastEnders, Coronation Street, Humans and Three Girls. In 2011, she won an Olivier for her West End role in Legally Blonde the Musical. Her memoir about navigating grief, A Life Reimagined, was published in 2024, and she is starring in The Feud on 5, launching on 14 April. She lives in Tynemouth with her son, Harvey.
This was my first holy communion. I don’t remember much about the day but I do recall the click-clack of the heels. The rest of the outfit was a bad choice – very old-fashioned and womanly, especially as I was a tomboy who loved trainers and tracksuits. If I’m honest, the main benefit of having holy communion, as a girl who likes to eat and drink, was the fact that during boring old mass I’d now get some bread and wine.
My expression here is so awkward, which perfectly represents how I felt at that age. I was always very nervous. I didn’t know what to do with my face; I clearly wasn’t keen on showing my teeth and I’m holding back a bit in general.
School made me especially anxious. I was geeky – not one of the cool girls. As soon as I got into the building, I’d think: “Get me out of this place.” There were a lot of big personalities, and it took me a long time to find a space where I belonged. Fortunately, I had dance class to retreat to after school.
Dancing became a way of releasing something inside me, something that I didn’t have the vocabulary to express. My dad died of a heart attack when I was four. It was never addressed and as a result I liked to stay busy. I was always filling my time trying not to think, and I hated the idea of going home and realising that I had nothing on. The quietness of Sundays was awful. I thrived on stress and stimulation; I danced as much as I could. Without knowing, I was learning a lesson: ballet is often painful, but if you stay with the pain it gets a lot easier. It took me decades to realise the same method applies to dealing with grief.
By the time I was 13 I knew I wanted to be an actor. It wasn’t as if I was going around telling everyone. I kept it quiet. But I have to give huge props to my mum – she always supported me. Normally, parents might suggest you have a backup plan if you’re choosing a risky career path – “Just do a degree and you’ll have something to fall back on” – as if they think you’re probably not going to make it. Mum never did that. Her attitude was always: “If it makes you happy, do it.” Luckily, that worked out.
Being in Byker Grove was thrilling. There’s no other word for it. You could not get me out of the door quick enough on the mornings we were filming. The only thing was, it attracted a significant amount of negative attention at school. A car would be waiting outside school to take me to set, and someone would knock on the door and say: “Jill, your car is here!” I was at an urban, working-class school. It wasn’t a place where students thought: “She’s working hard doing something she loves – and earning money. How cool is that?” The culture was to denigrate – to make me feel stupid, as if I was being a show-off. Going through puberty was already awkward and weird, and being on telly definitely made it worse.
I left drama school at 21, and for the next five years I was booking episodes on all of the usual jobs: Heartbeat, The Bill, Peak Practice. I was doing a lot of theatre, a lot of touring. I was a bit of a raver at the weekends. My sisters were into pub culture; backcombing their hair and drinking lager. Meanwhile, I wanted to get a ticket for a massive party in a field and slip into a leather waistcoat and miniskirt. A lot of the time I’d think: “Oh God, I don’t know whether I can pull another nine-hour rave.” But I would often find somewhere to sleep on the floor. It would take days to recover, but I loved every second of it.
In my 20s, it was as if I’d hit the ground running: I was on Coronation Street and EastEnders, Strictly, and then Chicago on the West End. Suddenly, people knew my name, but I wasn’t quite ready to absorb all this good stuff that was happening to me. I felt empty inside. My relationships were breaking down, and I started to question if I even wanted to be an actor.
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All of that unaddressed grief stopped me from being able to fully feel present with happiness. I kept waiting for something to fill the hole; for everything to fall into place. When success started happening, and I still wasn’t fixed, I started to unravel. I spent my 30s working on that: I had been leaning on alcohol to stop the thoughts, and eventually I went to AA. I got sober. I thought: “Hey, look at me. I’m ready for my life now!” I met a man named Matt. We fell in love. We were so happy together. Then, in 2017, he died. I was like: “Huh? That doesn’t seem right. That’s not how that was supposed to happen.” I thought I’d done the work, I thought I’d been a good girl, I thought I’d done all the things I should do. Matt dying of a heart attack brought me to another level of surrender entirely. I realised that what you have to do when life implodes is … nothing. You can’t productivity your way out of grief.
Some days, I still struggle. I am prone to existential moments where I honestly don’t know what life is about or why I am here. Then other days, I go: “That’s a real crock of shit that, Jill. It’s all overthinking, so get on with it and have a nice time.”
My experiences of losing my dad and Matt have taught me such valuable lessons about how to treat others who are grieving, too. When I was in the thick of it, I could never answer the question, “How are you?” It was too big. “How was this morning? How was school drop-off?” were far better. Breaking the grief into specific bits makes it easier to talk about.
While I am not as awkward as the little girl in the photo, there is still a bit of shyness about me. I can be open and confident because of the nature of my job, but I’m not like a lot of actors, who are able to walk into a room and hold court. I always think: “Why are you still performing? The camera’s not even on!” It’s just not who I am.
I suppose that’s why I am often cast as the “everywoman”. The character, who, when you watch the telly, you can go, “That could be me.” I’m not Nicole Kidman. The dramas I am in are never like Emily in Paris, full of scenic backdrops and beautiful clothes. If I’m on your screen, you’re probably more likely to think: “She’s going to go through a very hard time, but, in the end, we’re going to be fine.” Which pretty much sums up the story of my life.