Love Actually star Martine McCutcheon is on holiday in Mallorca with her son and husband Jack McManus and has received loads of support and well wishes from her hundreds of thousands of fans on social media.
With the pictures she posted from Mallorca this week she wrote: “Mallorca nights. ☀ After all the travel and walking at the airport and resort, my legs have felt like I’m lifting ten ton weights! But I’m shuffling along slowly, taking my sweet time and swimming has been so nice too, as it gives your joints and muscles such relief - You feel so light and weightless! Jack has been so brilliant at keeping Rafferty busy if I need a rest - So far this age (8) has been the most full on he’s ever been on a holiday! I think we will both need a break when his break is over! Anyway! We are off for an early bit off supper where they do the BEST paella! Have a wonderful evening all!”
She began appearing in television commercials at an early age and made her television debut in the children’s television drama Bluebirds in 1989. In the early 1990s, she had minor success as one third of the pop group Milan, but it was her role as Tiffany Mitchell in the BBC’s soap opera EastEnders and her role in the 2003 romantic comedy Love Actually that brought her stardom.
For the former she won the National Television Award, while the latter earned her the Empire and MTV Movie awards. She was written out of EastEnders at the end of 1998 and then embarked on a pop career, this time as a solo artist.
McCutcheon’s debut studio album, You Me & Us (1999), peaked at number two in the UK, and spawned the UK number one single “Perfect Moment” and two UK top 10 entries, “I’ve Got You” and the double-sided “Talking in Your Sleep/”Love Me”. Its follow-up, Wishing (2000), was less commercially successful but produced two UK top 10 singles: “I’m Over You” and “On the Radio”.
Her pop career stalled because of the poor reception of her 2002 third album, Musicality (2002). She returned to music in 2017 with the album Lost and Found. Outside of music, McCutcheon continued to appear in television programmes, films and stage productions; in My Fair Lady her portrayal of Eliza Doolittle won her a Laurence Olivier Award in 2002. She released her autobiography Who Does She Think She Is? in 2000.