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| EASTENDERS EXCLUSIVE EASTENDERS' KACEY: ' I dieted until only Gap Kids clothes fitted - but look at me now! ' A cruel comment about her weight triggered an eating disorder - now Kacey Ainsworth is positively voluptuous and has just won her fourth award IT WAS A MOMENT SHE'LL NEVER forget. Kacey Ainsworth, alias Eastenders' Little Mo, walked onto the stage at the Royal Albert Hall to collect her award - and she hadn't a clue what she was going to say. "You can't prepare in advance," she says. "And it's a jinx to stand in your bathroom rehearsing what you'll say when you win. "My little heart was hammering away, going 20 to the dozen," she admits, after winning her Most Popular Actress award at the National Television Awards. "Then my name was read out as the last nominee, the audience went bonkers and that's when I thought I might be in with a chance." Another nominee, of course, was Jessie Wallace, her Eastenders screen sister Kat, which could have been awkward. So was there any backstage rivalry? "Not really," says Kacey. "Last year, I was up for Best Newcomer and so was Jess - and she won it. In fact, she won a shed-load of awards." But Kacey's the only one who's won four best Actress awards in the same year. "I know. Brilliant, isn't it?" So what was Jessie's reaction? "She said, 'Congratulations. You deserve it. Let's have a drink.' The usual." Standing centre stage at the Royal Albert Hall was a nerve-racking experience for Kacey, 32. Even now, she worries she didn't thank everyone she meant to. "You can hardly remember your own name, never mind everyone else's," she says, but then she was also fretting about her appearence. "My make-up was a bit bolder than usual, and much more out there than Little Mo's. You don't think I looked too like Cruella De Vil, do you?" There was no danger of that in her gorgeous, deep-plunging and very off-the-shoulder Vivienne Westwood dress. In fact, we saw a whole new side of Kacey. "Yeah, I've got a fine pair," she says of her impressive cleavage with a laugh. "But then you should see my mum. It's just aswell we've both got big feet, otherwise we'd be forever falling over! They have to be hidden on Eastenders, of course. It's deliberate. If they ever look too noticeable on camera, I'm told to change into a polo-neck weater or something baggy." But Kacey wasn't going to hide her assets on what proved to be the biggest night of her life. "Vivienne Westwood cuts clothes for women with waists and boobs and bums. It's a fabulous dress and that was it's first outing. Unfortunately, unless I get it customised, it'll also have to be it's last in public. Well, it's too distinctive, isn't it?" And now it's on with the show. "Absolutely. The morning after the awards, I got my six o'clock alarm call. I got up, washed my hair, took a couple of Anadin Extra - marvellous! - and was on set by 7.30." Kacey admits she came in for a fair amount of ribbing on set. "At one point, I forgot one of my lines so someone - one of my screen family, of course - piped up, 'See, now that she's won an award she's too posh to learn her lines!' But it was all done with affection." Her huge success is a far cry from Kacey's life up until just 3 years ago. She had suffered from an eating disorder since before she was in double figures. As a nine-year-old playing one of the orphans in a West End production of Annie, Kacey was mortified when an adult cast member said he wouldn't lift her during one of the musical numbers because she was too fat. "That really affected me," says Kacey. "Haunted me, in fact." And the cruel comment returned to haunt her later on, when she gave up her job in an advertising agency, got accepted at a drama school and began to try her luck as an actress. "I started getting quite a bit of work, and when I met people who'd seen me in something on TV they'd always say, 'Oh, you look bigger in real life.' It was because I was only 5ft 2 and they meant I looked taller on screen, but what I thought they meant was that I was fat. I wasn't, but it became an obsession." Kacey began dieting obsessively. "I'd arrive late at dinner parties, pretending I'd been working, then say I'd already grabbed a sandwich so I'd just have coffee. And I never touched alcohol." From a healthy eight stone plus, Kacey's weight plummeted to under six-and-a-half stone. "I was skin and bones. And because I used to wear my hair in plaits, I looked about 11. When I went shopping, I couldn;t find anything in adult shops to fit me. It got so bad, I was forced to go to Gap Kids." Luckily, she had the support of loving family and friends. "My best friend, Sarah, is a doctor's daughter and she gave me a book that showed me what my anorexia was doing to my body. 'I can't get through to you mentally,' she said. 'But here's what's happening physically.' "That book...Yuk! It was vile. It showed in graphic detail that anorexia causes the body to start eating itself. And it had already begun for me. I had no real bum left to speak of, and I'd already stopped having periods. " But that was then. And, by the time Kacey won the role of Little Mo - the downtrodden wife of violent husband Trevor who was jailed for attempted murder when she cracked and hit him with an iron - two years ago, she was well on the road to recovery. "I still watch what I eat and I do exercise," she says. "But I do both in a sensible, balanced way. Elaine Lordan, who plays Lynne, knows about my history. If she ever sees me slipping back into my old ways, she has my permission to say." Now, the future looks bright. She and boyfriend Darren Hales, 34, who she first met when she was 13 and he was 14, will marry as soon as Kacey has a reasonable break from work. "We've been together six years and we've always felt we are destined to be together." Nor will Darren give up his job as a plumber. "It's a trade he's proud of," says Kacey. "He's a world away from showbiz types, but he's utterly supportive of what I do. I introduce him at industry events. But often they're not interested in him. It's different with our friends, though. That's when we're equal. I like that." But is there ever any tension about the couple's different take-home wages? "Absolutely not," says Kacey. "We split the bills in proportion to what we earn. The only time Darren gets annoyed is when people ask him why he bothers to work at all, when his missus earns so much money." Sure, the money is a bonus, but with four trophies sitting on her sideboard, a wedding on the horizon and her eating problems well and truly behind her, it's great that Kacey can finally say, "I'm absolutely on top of the world." WORDS: RICHARD BARBER IF YOU HAVE BEEN AFFECTED BY AN EATING DISORDER VISIT SOMETHING-FISHY, AN EXCELLENT SUPPORT SITE FOR VICTIMS OF ANOREXIA OR BULIMIA NERVOSA |
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| Closer - 26 October - 1 November 2002 |