Martine McCutcheon was born Martine Ponting on May 14th, 1976 at the Salvation Army Mothers Hospital in Hackney, London. Her early years were disrupted by the abusive behaviour of her drug-addicted father, Thomas Hennings. In her auto-biography, Martine recalls him dangling her over the edge of a balcony and threatening to drop her unless her mother, Jenny, did what he wanted. He left when she was two but would return when it suited him forcing Martine’s mother to continually move them around in an attempt to avoid him. It wasn’t until Martine turned nine that her mother finally won sole custody of her and secured an injunction against Hennings seeing her until she was 18.
About a year later, Martine’s mother met and married window cleaner John McCutcheon (the father of Martine’s younger brother) and Martine then took his surname. She knew she wanted to be a performer from a young age but as her family couldn’t afford the fees for a drama school she had to find an alternative method to learn her trade. McCutcheon met a woman at a local dance class who’d been to the Italia Conti stage school and suggested it would be a good environment for her. Martine wrote a persuasive letter and a Church of England trust agreed to sponsor her. She trained after school and every Saturday (learning tap, ballet, jazz, and drama) in order to catch up with the more privileged children who were competing with her for a place at the prestigious school.
At the age of 12 McCutcheon obtained her first acting role and was paid £350 to appear in an American television commercial for the drink, Kool-Aid, which was followed by modelling assignments and bit parts in TV shows such as in the ITV police drama The Bill. By the time she was 15, she had formed an all-girl band, ‘Milan’, with two fellow students and landed a record contract.The group toured as the support act for the British Boyband, East 17 and were reasonably successful. They entered the dance charts three times but Martine ended up leaving the group, hoping for bigger things.
While working as a shopgirl at ‘Knickerbox’, Martine was offered the small part of Tiffany Raymond on the popular BBC soap opera, EastEnders. As McCutcheon received more exposure from the soap press, interest also increased but her big break was marred by a series of salacious stories sold to the press, first by her father and then by her ex-boyfriend Gareth Cooke. Despite this, the role of Tiffany grew, as did McCutcheon’s popularity from being an unknown in 1995, to having 22 million viewers tune in to see her final scenes in Albert Square on New Years Eve, 1998. In reality, Martine had decided to quit the soap in order to embark on a pop career and publicly slammed the BBC’s “Controller of Continuing Drama Series”, Mal Young, who made the decision to kill her character. She accused him of treating her unfairly and bringing her role in the soap to an end so irrevocably, merely as punishment for quitting. In turn Young has hit back, saying her anger only arose because she wanted him to keep her role in EastEnders open as a ’safety net’, in case her pop career failed. Martine’s auto-biography, unsurprisingly, does not speak very favourably of Young.
In 1999, Martine stunned her critics by grabbing the number one spot on the UK Singles Chart with Perfect Moment, launching her solo career with Virgin Records. Her album, You, Me and Us, went double platinum and she had two further top ten hits: I’ve Got You and Talking in Your Sleep. Her second album, Wishing, was less successful, charting at number 25 in the UK album charts but still scored a further two top ten singles.
On the back of her 2002 performance in My Fair Lady on London’s West End, Martine released her third, and last, album. Musicality showcased a number of Broadway covers and charted at #55 in the UK Album Chart. Unfortunately this wasn’t good enough for the record company, resulting in the cancellation of Martine’s record contract but her musical performance as Eliza Doolittle did still win her a Lawrence Olivier Award despite ill-health forcing her to miss many of her shows.
Hollywood beckoned in 2003 as Martine featured in her first film role alongside a plethora of British acting talent for Christmas rom-com, Love Actually. The film did poorly amongst the critics but was a Box Office smash and Martine netted Best Trans-atlantic Breakthrough at the 2004 MTV Movie Awards.
Back to Britain and British TV for 2005, Martine appeared in two episodes of Spooks, bringing her back to the attention of the British media. Christmas appearances on Who Wants to be a Millionaire and Parkinson followed as she promoted her workout DVD, Martine McCutcheon: Dance Body Workout. 2006 was a year of adverts as Martine appeared in commercials for both Tesco and Lenor before starring in two independent films, Withdrawl and Jump! in 2007. Withdrawl won the Cannes Film Festival NFB Online Short Film Competition.
As of January 2008, Martine is back on our screens with ITV’s original concept series, Echo Beach/Moving Wallpaper, and is back in the British press along with boyfriend Jack McManus.
Biography based on Wikipedia’s Martine McCutcheon entry.