Vicky Entwistle felt "wore down" playing Janice Battersby on 'Coronation Street'.
Vicky Entwistle
The 52-year-old actress admits it was tough playing the famous soap character but she decided to quit after 14 years as she was "desperate to find some peace" away from Janice.
She said: "Corrie was only the third job I’d done and you go from being yourself to this loud, obnoxious woman that’s showing up in half the country’s living rooms.
"I wasn’t prepared for the attention. It was like being dropped in the sea when you can’t really swim. By the time I left, I was desperate to find some peace. It was a brilliant job in so many ways but by the end, it was hard to know where Janice ended and I began. She was so feisty, it became physically exhausting to play her – hours on end shouting and screaming at people. I’d think at the end of filming, ‘How the hell am I going to drive home after all that?’ I’d have to go somewhere and calm myself down."
And Vicky has confessed she almost felt like she was "becoming Janice".
Speaking to the Daily Mirror newspaper, she added: "Those rows, all that drama … I was going through it physically in this full-on, relentless schedule. It almost felt like I was becoming Janice. People presumed I was like her in real-life and I even started to worry myself. I’d think, ‘Am I this gobby? Am I this rude?’ In the end, it wore me down. I was exhausted. I know it wasn’t exactly life down the pits, but I was getting more and more anxious and I had to get my life back. In the end, I just knew I couldn’t do it any more."
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