Georgina Campbell: 'I wanted to be an air hostess, not an actor'
At 16, Georgina Campbell hated auditions and never had more than one line in the school play. So how did she beat Sarah Lancashire to TV’s biggest prize? The rising star on lucky breaks and why there’s no shame in playing the girlfriend
Last year, at the age of 22, and barely into her career, Georgina Campbell won Britain’s biggest TV prize for best actress. Not many people expected her to – she was up against Sarah Lancashire, Keeley Hawes and Sheridan Smith. And she was virtually unknown – her BBC3 drama Murdered By My Boyfriend, a domestic-violence drama based on a true story, was critically acclaimed but had nothing like the hype of Happy Valley and Line of Duty. But if you were one of the 3.5 million people who watched Campbell play Ashley – the young woman beaten to death by her abusive partner – with such restraint and realism, her win was no surprise.