Past/Present/Future for…Ann Marie Davies

Birkenhead-born Ann Marie Davies, 33, is most known for her part as Katrina Evans in Channel 4 soap opera Brookside and has appeared in BBC’s Doctors, ITV’s Heartbeat and Sky1’s Is Harry On the Boat. Making a return to acting, she is starring in Nicky Allt’s new football-driven play One Night In Istanbul this summer. Football, ironically, is a sport closely associated to the former Miss Merseyside and Miss Manchester model. She played for Manchester United ladies football team at a time when she represented the England ladies football team at the age of 19 and now plays football for Chester City ladies alongside running her own theatre company and acting.

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PAST: I started at the Barbara Johnson Stage School when I was probably about seven or eight and used to perform in dance shows at my local theatre – Floral Pavilion. Funnily, my career has led me back to the theatre, performing in pantomimes. I never went to stage school as such but I did theatre studies and performing arts at Birkenhead Sixth Form College and then Wirral Metropolitan College on Borough Road which is now no longer there!

At the same time I did modelling competitions, I appeared in a few short films before Janet Walton – the mother to the all-girl sextuplets featured in the BBC documentaries – helped me land a part in Brookside. I was in the soap opera for over four years, which Les Dennis played my dad in, and left two years before it sadly ended.

Since then I’ve played the German air stewardess Helga in a UK theatre tour of Derek Benfield’s Anyone For Breakfast, Rita in Billy Liar at the Gala Theatre in Durham, and the 15-year-old bully victim Julia in Brian McCann’s Bully musical amongst a cast of seven. I did Bully in 2007 which was a collaboration between mine and Suzanne Collins’ company High Horizons and Brian’s company Active Drama.

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PRESENT: I’m so excited to be back on stage and part of One Night In Istanbul because it’s a fantastic script and is being done in an amazing theatre as well as being close to home and to my family. I play the Turkish cleaner Adelet and Nicky Allt describes her as “a modern day Cinderella”. Adelet’s two brothers have stolen some money which they’ve hidden in a hotel she works in and it’s been found by these group of Scousers who are in Istanbul to watch Liverpool in the Champions League final.

To try and get the money, she starts to flirt with one of the supporters, Tommy, who John Bishop plays, after he first starts flirting with her. It’s very funny and involves my character dancing to Elvis Presley’s ‘One Night With You’ and I get to do the conga to a Rafa Benitez chant the Liverpool supporters sing.

I actually remember that night in May in 2005 really well, being a supporter of Liverpool Football Club, and after the game I was with all my family and we went into Liverpool city centre and I just remember people being everywhere and even hanging out the trees. It was an unbelievable week!

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FUTURE: Together with Suzanne Collins, we run our company High Horizons, which we set up in November 2005, and continue to run holiday clubs all year round and kids acting classes. It’s a lot of work especially as both Suzanne and I have young children and each needs a lot of attention! This is why I’m looking forward to One Night In Istanbul because it’s my first major part since I had my three-year-old daughter Jasmine. This play is all I’m thinking about right now, but eventually we plan to expand High Horizons and set up clubs across the country.

Ann Marie Davies was speaking to Michael Hunt

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One Night In Istanbul is at the Liverpool Empire on 9 until 18 July.

*Photograph taken by Paul Tsanos