Bonnie Langford quit 'EastEnders' due to the soap's gruelling schedule.
Bonnie Langford
The 54-year-old actress will bow out of her role as Carmel Kazemi in the coming weeks, and the former 'Doctor Who' star admits she needed to "come up for air" after finding it tough to arrange anything in her private life due to her filming commitments on the BBC One soap.
She said: "In 'EastEnders', you don't know when you are going to be needed, you are on call all the time and don't know your availability until the Friday before.
"Silly things, like booking a dentist appointment, become impossible. That sounds like a stupid thing to have as an issue, but after a while you don't know where you are. I started to think I needed to come up for air a little bit.
"I needed to do other stuff, to get out there and feed that other part of my soul. You have to nurture the whole lot, otherwise you can't do your job properly."
Bonnie also claimed she didn't receive any "support" from 'EastEnders' team while playing out the recent hard-hitting knife crime storyline which saw Carmel's son Shakil Kazemi (Shaheen Jafargholi) tragically stabbed to death by a gang.
When asked if she was supported by the 'EastEnders' team during the plot, she replied: "No, but I had support at home."
Bonnie has wasted no time seeking other opportunities away from Albert Square after landing the role of Dorothy Brock in musical '42nd Street', and she started show rehearsals just two days after she finished filming in Walford.
She added to The Stage magazine: "At the beginning of the year I thought I needed to do some live stuff.
"I'd been thinking if it could fit around 'EastEnders' that would be great, but if not that would be fine too."
Tagged in Shaheen Jafargholi