Jennifer Ellison

All-round entertainer Jennifer Ellison is best known for her roles in the British soap opera Brookside and the Hollywood adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera, but she also made a brief attempt at pop stardom in the mid-noughties. Born in Liverpool in 1983, Ellison began studying dance from the age of three and trained at several performing arts schools before landing her big break in 1998 with the role of Emily Chadwick in the Channel 4 soap Brookside, a character she played until 2003. In the same year she launched a pop career with a cover version of Transvision Vamp's "Baby I Don't Care," which reached number six, but after winning Gordon Ramsay's Hell's Kitchen, her second single, "Bye Bye Boy," a reworking of Nanase Aikawa's 1996 J-rock hit, stalled at number 13 and she was dropped from her Emap label. Since then, she's concentrated on her acting career, appearing as Meg Giry in 2004's The Phantom of the Opera and kidnap victim Tracey in Brit horror flick The Cottage, while also performing as Roxie Hart in the West End musical Chicago and Beth in the touring version of Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds. ~ Jon O'Brien, Rovi