Former Hollyoaks star Terri Dwyer has admitted that she learned her acting chops while on the job.
The actress - who played Ruth Osborne between 1995–2001, 2003-04 and then again in 2008 - explained that she spent her first series fearing she would be fired over her inability to act.
Dwyer was one of the cast members not from the acting school Italia Conti and said: "Interestingly, I told [casting director] Dorothy Andrews that I thought I needed some acting classes.
"And she said, 'The reason we've cast you is because you're wet clay and we can see potential in you, and we want to mould you'. For the first year, I kept thinking I was going to get the sack! I thought I looked like a piece of cardboard compared to the other actors.
"But I learned on the job and I worked hard. I constantly watched the episodes and worked out what I'd done right and what I'd done wrong.
"Even after 20 years in the business, I don't pretend to be the best actress in the business, but there's not much you can tell me about camera angles and marks and all the rest of it that I don't already know.
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"Drama school obviously has its place, but I learnt on the job."
Dwyer went on to say that she does keep in touch with her former co-stars, revealing: "They're all still very dear friends. And we support each other massively. Every time I do a play in town, they come and sit in the audience, and vice versa.
"They were very special times - and very wild times! We were big party animals, but in our defence it was because we worked hard, six days a work. If we didn't party hard in the evenings, we'd have had no social life. We had to go out and unwind a bit."
