Hannah Waddingham recalls teacher's cruel jibe about her face
'Ted Lasso' star Hannah Waddingham was told she didn't have a face for TV in a very cruel way by a childhood drama teacher.
Hannah Waddingham was told she didn't have a face for TV by a childhood drama teacher.
The 'Ted Lasso' actress - who started her career with small roles in British soaps like 'Doctors' and 'Brookside' as well as working on the West End - can still recall her teacher mocking her appearance in front of the entire class.
Speaking to Michelle Visage on her BBC Radio 2 podcast 'Rule Beakers', she said: "I had one drama teacher that said to the whole class: "Oh Hannah will never work on screen because she looks like one side of her face has had a stroke.
"I thought, 'I will do. Come hell or high water, I will work on screen.' "
The 'My Family' star admitted even her headmistress tried to stop her from purusing a career in acting.
She added: "My headmistress… said: 'You're bright enough to read drama', and I said, 'I don't want to read drama, I want to do drama'.
"She refused to give me a reference, so I managed to get a scholarship for the drama school I went to and I walked back in, put it on her desk and left the room without shutting the door.
"She was always dismissive of me because, it wasn't that I wasn't academic, [but] I knew what I wanted to do so it annoyed her that I turned my back on the academia.
"So she would purposely put everyone else in the school plays and have me understudy."
The 49-year-old star has proven them both wrong, rising to fame in 'Game of Thrones' and going onto win an Emmy, Critics Choice and Screen Actors Guild Award for her 'Ted Lasso' hole as Richmond FC owner Rebecca Welton.
She wants her career and experiences to be an inspiration to others to make the jump from theatre to working on screen.
She explained: "This is why, in my Emmys speech, I made a point - the one thing I said to myself [was], if this weird moment comes and I get this award, and I get my foot in this door, I'm going to rip it off its hinges for music theatre people, or theatre people, to follow."
