Nadia Sawalha

NADIA SAWALHA (born 18th November 1964) is an English actress and television presenter of Jordanian, British, and French Huguenot descent. Sawalha is perhaps best known for her role as Annie Palmer in the BBC soap opera EastEnders during the 1990s, although most of her television work is now as a presenter rather than an actress.

After training at the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts, Nadia, who hails from a family of successful actors, began her career in theatre. In 1997 she got her big break in EastEnders. As the tough-nut business woman Annie Palmer, Nadia became a familiar face in thousands of homes around the UK. She remained in the role until 1999. Her other acting television credits include Casualty, Which Way to the War and ITV police drama, The Bill. She has also appeared in the films Clockwise, Top Tips, Sleeping with the Fishes and the BBC Victorian drama Station Jim. Presenting Aside from acting, Nadia has become a regular personality on daytime TV, after presenting the live programmes Loose Women and Live Talk. For the BBC, she has fronted four series of Passport to the Sun, the Total series, TV Mail, Heir Hunters, Perfect Partner and Family Exchange. She is also a co-host on the live documentary City Hospital. She has previously hosted the morning BBC One show Living in the Sun, about British ex-pats living in Spain, made by Ricochet, and Wanted Down Under, which shows families who want to make the move to Australia, and occasionally New Zealand what it would be like to live and work in those Antipodean nations. She can also be seen on Accidents Can Happen, a daytime BBC One programme produced by Twofour, which follows families as they try to rebuild their homes and their lives following disaster. Nadia co-presented The One Show with Adrian Chiles. This nationwide-style show launched on BBC One in the summer of 2006 and features a mix of interviews, factual features and topical stories. On Wednesday March 14th 2007, it was confirmed on Digital Say Broadcast and The Sun that Nadia would not return to co-present The One Show when it returned in the summer of 2007, because she was pregnant. In 2008, she returned to BBC One, to once again present its daytime programme, Wanted Down Under. Nadia is the daughter of the actor Nadim Sawalha, and sister of television star, Julia Sawalha. The three all starred together in Dearest Daddy... Darling Daughter at the Young Vic Theatre in South London in 1997.

Nadia left Italia Conti at 15. 'I was a strange child,' she says. 'I was starting to be rebellious at school. I wanted to get out in the world.'

She travelled for a year before returning to work as an usherette at the National Theatre where, at the age of 17, she met her first boyfriend who was training to be an actor.

'Because I'm flirtatious and big-boobed, I look like I would get about a bit. But I'm very moralistic. I've never had a one-night stand. I've only ever had five relationships.' Nadia didn't find success as an actress until the age of 32. She struggled to make ends meet selling Moroccan scarves on a market and worked as a waitress in Pizza Hut. To rub salt into the wound, her sister Julia was already a star.

'I was intimidated by her success,' says Nadia. 'I was frightened of it because she was younger. In the early days, I would go on a job and people would call me Julia. I would laugh it off, but inside it was hurtful. And that's why it was so wonderful when I got into EastEnders.'

Nadia Sawalha's first husband Justin Mildwater for nearly four years, but within a few months of her appearing on the soap, they separated. A month later, he committed suicide shortly after she left him.

Her relationship with co-star Marc Bannerman became public knowledge a few weeks after Justin's death, but when she left EastEnders in 2000 ? determined, she said, to have children ? their relationship foundered.

She says she was attracted to her present husband Mark Adderley, who is five years her junior, because he was 'a grown-up'. She adds: 'He felt like somebody who could look after me.' They produce a daughter called Maddy, who was born on Christmas Day 2002. Nadia has since celebrated the birth of her second daughter Kiki in August 2007.

Nadia has appeared as a guest on Test the Nation and contributed to Comic Relief by taking part in Celebrity Driving School. She also starred as the 'hidden' celebrity in an episode of the CBBC gameshow Hider in the House.

Nadia won the 2007 series of Celebrity MasterChef, beating Craig Revel Horwood and Midge Ure in the final.

She then went onto host the children's version of the show Junior Masterchef, she was said to be 'delighted' to be given the chance to host the show.

In December 2010, Nadia starred in a fitness DVD entitled Nadia Sawalha: Fat To Fab after losing three and a half stone.

In January 2011, Nadia starred in the sixth series of ITV's Dancing On Ice with Scottish professional Mark Hanretty, but was voted out in Week 1.