Love Actually star Martine McCutcheon: Health issues had an impact on everything

It’s been 18 years since Perfect Moment topped the charts, but Martine McCutcheon says her perfect moment is happening right now. 

“It’s the best time of my life,” says the 41-year-old actress and singer. 

Having battled with health issues, Martine worried she might never become a mum until son Rafferty came along two years ago. “I’m so content and I now have a much healthier balance,” she says.

The Hackney girl was just 18 when EastEnders launched her to fame. She played Tiffany on the soap for four years, with an incredible 22 million people tuning in to see her final episode.

And although her character may have been killed off, it didn’t kill Martine’s career. Instead she became a pop star and bagged an Olivier award for the 2001 revival of My Fair Lady, then played tea lady to Hugh Grant’s Prime Minister in the worldwide hit comedy Love Actually.

Looking back at her whirlwind of success, Martine muses, “I know I was a very lucky girl. I earned great money and did what I loved for a living, but there was so much pressure  and stress on me to deliver the goods.”

She also felt lonely. “Fame ostracises you because you’re earning all this money and don’t relate to where you’re from any more. You no longer know who you are,” she says. “But now I know who I am, I know who my friends are, I’ve got my family. It’s lovely.”

Missing many My Fair Lady performances because of health problems, Martine was eventually diagnosed with ME. The chronic fatigue syndrome proved so debilitating she 

was unable to work and she filed for bankruptcy in 2013. Luckily the birth of Rafferty two years later helped her turn her life around.

“He’s the best thing ever,” Martine, who is married to singer-songwriter Jack McManus, coos of the toddler. “He’s made me realise not to sweat the small stuff. I’d become quite jaded, but seeing everything through his eyes has given me a new lease of life.”

Martine and Jack’s son is a lively character who enjoys Norman Wisdom, You’ve Been Framed and Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em. “He loves slapstick and pretending to fall over and he’s got a little Spider-Man guitar and he goes for it like a rock star. He’s hilarious and cheeky, but really sweet.”

Now fully back in work mode as she launches a new album Lost And Found, Martine is managing both ME and Lyme disease. “It’s easy when you’re on crazy schedules for things to flare up, but you just have to manage it the best you can. I do that with exercise, diet and pacing myself,” she adds.

She’s really proud of the album, which is her first record since her covers collection in 2002, Musicality, and her first album of original music since Wishing in 2000. She and Jack co-wrote the majority of the new songs, a rockier sound than people might expect. “It’s a bit grittier, a little bit darker and there’s an energy running through it.”

Sitting down eight years ago to write songs, she wasn’t thinking about releasing them. “It was something I did for me and I had no idea at the time if I’d ever release a new album or perform again,” she says. “It was a personal thing and that makes putting the music out there scary. It’s just me saying and singing what I think. Hopefully that’s what the fans want.

“My struggle and my ups and downs might be very public, but that doesn’t mean people can’t identify with them. It’s just life. Health issues had an impact on everything.” 

Then there was motherhood. “It took a lot longer than I’d planned. It was a very difficult time and I hit rock bottom. I couldn’t get insurance for work and I couldn’t get pregnant. Luckily I had Jack, but everything else had gone.

“I had to pick myself up and the only way is up when you get that low. My main focus was trying to be a mum and getting well enough to be able to have my son. That’s why I was out of the limelight – just dipping in and out here and there, because I needed to get my health back on track, be strong enough to carry a baby and then be a mummy to him.”

She feels much stronger now and doesn’t think the flack she took for skipping My Fair Lady performances would be as hurtful now as it was at the time. “It really hurt me because I was so young. I didn’t have that thick skin you need in this industry,” she adds. 

“My way to get through it was just to try and laugh it off, which is still my go-to. It made its mark on me for years, though, but writing about the hard times on the new album gave me some of the best material. It’s weird how something good comes out of something so bad. It sounds cliché, but it’s true.”

Growing up in east London, Martine Kimberley Sherri Pointing appeared in commercials and bit parts on TV, but music was her real passion. By the age of 15, she was in the girl band Milan and had taken her stepfather John McCutcheon’s surname. Milan were the support act for East 17, but disbanded when their career stalled.

“Acting was a very happy accident that I took up because, quite frankly, I needed the money,” admits Martine. EastEnders turned out to be a dream job. “I loved the camaraderie. The minute you drove through those gates everyone had your back. I’ll always love that time.”

Tiffany was a rebel and there’s something of a bad girl vibe to Martine’s new music. Is she a rock chick at heart? “I think I am a bit,” she laughs.

“I’ve always had my tattoos, but I’ve hidden them when I’ve been doing the more sort of glossy stuff. But then the music I listen to is a real mixture. I like strong, sassy women. I love Barbra Streisand and Stevie Nicks, but I also like Soul, The Eagles and Tom Petty.”

At the showcase for the new album – where Martine, Jack and their band rocked the roof off the London Edition Basement bar – she also namechecked Bruce Springsteen.

She’s never met him. “But I would love to,” she yelps like a true fan girl. She has, however, met Sting, whose Every Breath You Take she covers on the new record. “He was delightful. It was at an Armani party and he had this real essence of a star about him, but he was really sweet and humble, as the biggest stars often are.”

At the showcase Martine also talked about her love/hate relationship with her job. Asked to elaborate she says, “A lot of people in the industry feel the same way. It’s all-consuming and as a result it’s really hard to have balance in your life.

It’s all or nothing, highs and lows, feast or famine all the way. You hate it, then love it, then hate it, then love it again. I was talking to Colin Firth at a Comic Relief event and I asked him, ‘Is it just me?’ He said, ‘No, we’re all like it.’”

This year’s Comic Relief saw Martine, Colin and the rest of the Love Actually cast reunited for a short-film sequel 14 years later.

“When I did the original film I was so scared that someone might label me some sort of fraud who couldn’t act really, that I’d be best sticking with TV and couldn’t hold my own in the movie world. So it was so lovely to come back to it, to feel more confident and just enjoy it.”

It hasn’t, however, given Martine a taste for more acting. She prefers the flexible schedule that music affords her and the fact she can take Rafferty with her on the road. And she’s not, she insists, big on diva demands.

“I remember reading years ago that I had all these requests for champagne and this and that, but I’m really happy if I’ve just got a banana. If I’ve got a banana and water and the band have some nice cold beers we’re good to go,” she bursts out laughing. “Don’t get me wrong, I’d love some champagne – I’ll just have to pay for it myself.”

Looking back on her first album Martine says, “The essence of who I am is still very much the same. It’s very easy to have the little girl with big dreams knocked out of you, but I think it’s important to keep that – to be childish sometimes, to indulge in your innocence and your dreams. I’d never want to let that go.”

She and Jack met in 2009 and were married in 2012. The singer-songwriter scored a top 30 album with Either Side Of Midnight, has written songs for the likes of Boyzone and toured with John Mayer and Amy Macdonald. 

“He’s riddled with talent and plays virtually every instrument,” Martine marvels, adding that things can get heated when they’re writing together. “I hear all these things in my head, but because I don’t play anything I get so frustrated.

There are lots of slammed doors because you’re writing about really personal things and trying to explain the essence, and sometimes he gets it and sometimes he doesn’t. Then he’ll suggest things, I’ll say, ‘That’s rubbish,’ and it kills him.

“We’re each other’s biggest critics and also each other’s biggest advocates. It’s great to have somebody you can be that honest and open with. We’re really in love and really secure with each other. We have a great dynamic.”

And is Jack a great dad? “He genuinely is,” Martine says. “He’s been a brilliant friend, a brilliant carer, a brilliant husband, and now to see what a brilliant man he is as a dad as well is wonderful.”

Martine’s new album Lost And Found is out on Friday. Tickets for her November tour are on sale now from gigsandtours.com.