Susan Tully
| Susan Tully | |
|---|---|
| Born | 20 October 1967 Highgate, London, England |
Susan Tully (born 20 October 1967 in Highgate, London) is an English television producer, director and former actress.
Her most prominent television roles to date have been those of single mother Michelle Fowler in the BBC soap opera EastEnders and her pivotal part in early Grange Hill. Tully played one of EastEnders' original characters, appearing in the first episode on 19 February 1985 and remaining central to the series until 1995. Tully then gave up acting to work behind the camera and has directed and produced various British television programmes.
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[edit] Early life
Tully's father was a watch-case maker, her mother a housewife and she was brought up on a London council estate.[1]
Sue attended school in Barnsbury, Islington. While at school she took up acting as a hobby and attended the Anna Scher children's theatre, which turned out to be a fast track into television work.[1]
[edit] Career
At the age of nine Tully hosted the live television children's programme, Our Show, and she later went on to work on The Saturday Banana with Bill Oddie.[2]
She was then cast in the BBC children's television serial, Grange Hill. She played schoolgirl Suzanne Ross for three years (1981–1984). She had left Grange Hill and was about to go to sixth form college when she got her next big acting break.
At the age of 16, Tully secured a major role in the BBC's new soap opera EastEnders. She played Michelle Fowler from the show's inception in 1985 to 1995. During her time on the show, her character was famously made pregnant at the age of 16 after an affair she had with the 39-year-old adulterer, Den Watts. Since quitting the soap in 1995, Tully has allegedly been made several offers to return, but has so far turned each offer down, including the latest offer to return for her on-screen mother Pauline's funeral in early 2007.[3][citation needed]
In the late 1990s Tully began concentrating on directing for television (credited as "Sue Tully"). Shows she has directed episodes for include EastEnders, London's Burning, 55 Degrees North (2004), The Bill (1999–2004), Funland (2005), Secret Diary of a Call Girl (2007), Lark Rise to Candleford (2009), and Silent Witness (2010).Stella [disambiguation needed 
] (2012)
[edit] Personal life
Tully is a supporter of The Meningitis Trust and she has also been involved in the Comic Relief fundraising event. She is close friends with Letitia Dean, who played her best friend Sharon Watts in EastEnders.[4] Tully was a bridesmaid at Dean's wedding to Jason Pethers in 2002.[5]
[edit] References
- ^ a b "After 10 years as TV's most famous single mother, Susan Tully ", The Independent. URL last accessed on 2007-03-14.
- ^ Kingsley, Hilary (1990). The EastEnders Handbook. BBC books. ISBN 0685529576.
- ^ "Pauline's soap snub", Supanet. URL last accessed 2007-02-11
- ^ "LIFE AFTER SHARON", Sunday Mirror. URL last accessed on 2006-09-18.
- ^ "EastEnd Letitia's diamond geezer", Sunday Mirror. URL last accessed on 2006-09-18.
