Joanna Page's husband feared she 'hanged herself' after she lost out on an acting role
Joanna Page was so heartbroken that she was rejected for an unnamed acting role, she told her husband, actor James Thornton, that she was not coming back home after Joanna went to a hotel room and locked herself away.
Joanna Page's husband thought she "hanged" herself after she ran away from home after being rejected for an acting role.
The 48-year-old actress locked herself away and drowned her sorrows in a hotel room following the heartbreak about not landing the unnamed acting job, and Joanna's spouse, 49-year-old actor James Thornton, panicked when she told him that she was not coming home.
Joanna told the new issue of Radio Times magazine: "[I] drank and drank and drank, and said to my husband, 'I'm not coming back.'
"He phoned the hotel next morning - I think he thought I'd hanged myself because I was so low, and I thought, 'I can't carry on with this any more. I'm done.'"
As the then-jobbing actress - who met James when they starred in 1999's David Copperfield, the BBC's two-part Christmas special mini-series - was unsuccessful in bagging the role, she later returned to her job as a shoe shop assistant.
Joanna said: "I went back to my job in a shoe shop, and thought, 'I'm happy with this.'"
But the rejection was a blessing in disguise because Joanna received the script for the hit BBC sitcom Gavin and Stacey - written by Ruth Jones, 58, and James Corden, 47, who also starred in the show as Vanessa "Nessa" Jenkins and Neil "Smithy" Smith.
And her role as title character, Barry, Wales, resident Stacey West - who falls in love with and later marries Billericay, Essex, resident Gavin Shipman (Mathew Horne) - made her a household name.
Joanna - who appeared in Gavin and Stacey from the show's debut in 2007, until its finale in 2024 - said: "Then two weeks later, a script came in about a Welsh girl who falls in love with a boy from Essex, and it completely and utterly changed my life.
"It's given me amazing opportunities, wonderful experiences and a whole new family."
Even though Gavin and Stacey: The Finale - which raked in over 20 million viewers when it aired - ended on Christmas Day in 2024, Joanna said all the cast, including Larry Lamb (Mick Shipman), Alison Steadman (Pam Shipman), Gwen West (Melanie Walters), and Rob Brydon (Uncle Bryn), are still in touch.
She shared: "We've got a WhatsApp group called 'Christmas is occuring', and we send messages all the time.
"When Rob was doing [BBC game show] Destination X, he'd send us photos, and James would zoom into them and try and work out the locations.
"We're always sending each other messages of support or arranging to see each other.
"And I've got a secret little chat with just me and Ruth, too."
