For well over a decade Jennifer Ellison disappeared from our television screens, and the confident and bubbly woman she once was gradually faded away. The blonde Liverpudlian teenager had burst into the mainstream on the ground-breaking soap Brookside at just 16, and went on to become one of the glamour icons of the Noughties, with West End success, a record deal and a Hollywood film role. But then she vanished. Now, after many years away from the spotlight, she’s making a comeback on ITV’s acclaimed Liverpool drama G’wed.The cheeky comedy follows a group of unruly Scouse teenagers and has won praise for its sharp social realism and brilliantly observed humour. Jennifer joins the cast as Aimee Morris’s estranged mother Anna, but her return very nearly didn’t happen as fear and crippling self-doubt had left her terrified to step back onto a set. ‘I had a bit of a breakdown the night before,’ admits Jennifer. ‘I thought, “What will happen if I don’t know what I’m doing? What if I’m no good?” I didn’t feel like Jennifer Ellison the actress who’s done this and this and this. I felt like the Jennifer Ellison who walked onto Brookside that first day.’Yet within moments of stepping on set the confidence Jennifer thought she’d lost returned. ‘There were so many people from Brookside in the cast and crew it made me feel really at ease,’ she says. ‘After I’d done my first scene, I thought, “This is exactly the same as it used to be!” It’s an emotional toughness she feels is the very spirit of Liverpool women - something she feels lies at the very heart of G’wed. ‘I think that’s very like Liverpool women,’ she says. ‘They come out effing and blinding but then they’ve got this heart, this fire, passion, drive and determination.’For Jennifer, now 43, this second act is not about craving the limelight, it’s something far more cathartic. ‘It’s definitely a comeback because I’ve had so long out, but it’s a comeback for me personally just to know that I can do it again,’ she says. ‘It’s so much more than a job to me.’ The blonde Liverpudlian teenager had burst into the mainstream on the ground-breaking soap Brookside at just 16 After Brookside and still barely out of her teens, Jennifer flew off to Hollywood to star alongside Gerard Butler and Minnie Driver in the Phantom Of The Opera filmFor years she had avoided auditions entirely, convinced she no longer belonged in the acting world. And the fear of being judged became paralysing. ‘As soon as a tape casting would come through, I’d go, “Oh my God,”’ she says. ‘If they wanted me to go face to face I always had an excuse. I don’t know how my agent didn’t get rid of me. I would rather literally rather sell my soul than walk into an audition room and be judged. I always doubted myself. I was thinking, “What happens if I’m not good and they sack me?” I’d given up on myself. I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror.’A violent gangster fiancé, public scrutiny and motherhood had gradually pushed her away from the industry she entered as a teen in 1998 as Brookside’s Emily Shadwick. Over six years on the show Emily transformed from an innocent schoolgirl into a one-woman crime wave, while the character turned Jennifer into one of the defining soap stars of the era.After Brookside and still barely out of her teens, she jetted off to Hollywood to star alongside Gerard Butler and Minnie Driver in the Phantom Of The Opera film, became the youngest-ever Roxie Hart in Chicago in London’s West End and even launched a pop career, all before the age of 25. She became one of the biggest sex symbols of the Noughties and a regular lads’ mag cover girl.But while her career was soaring, Jennifer was trying to cope with what she describes as a terrifying ‘parallel life’ during a six-year relationship with Liverpool gangster Anthony Richardson, who was jailed for eight years in 2011 over a sword attack in Liverpool. Privately she was living with violence, fear and gangland intimidation including shootings and fire-bombings. At one point she was forced off the road by machete-wielding rivals.‘It was a volatile relationship and he was connected with this gangland world,’ she has said. ‘I was having nails in my letter box, going into hiding and fearing for my life walking down the street. For years I thought bad things like that happened to everyone. It was so traumatic.‘I was terrified to leave, but then he got caught cheating so it was my get out of jail free card. It meant I wasn’t going to get my face slashed if I left him and I could go without there being any repercussions.’ Jennifer said in pregnancy she was 'three stone heavier than I am now and I’d kind of lost myself’ Looking back now, she admits she hadn’t processed the trauma at the time. ‘I don’t think I dealt with it. I think I just locked it away because I had to continue,’ she says softly. In 2009 she married businessman and former boxer Rob Tickle, and they built a very different life together in Liverpool with their three sons Bobby, Harry and Charlie. She also created the Jelli Studios, a performing arts academy that has helped hundreds of young people pursue careers in dance and theatre.‘Being a mum turned my world upside down,’ she says. ‘Everything revolved around the boys. I came last in the pecking order.’ She began to turn her back on TV, and years of putting herself last led to weight gain and a sugar addiction that saw her drinking up to eight cans of Coke a day. The trolling about her body was relentless. ‘I think any woman who says they’re not bothered about it is lying,’ Jennifer says.She vividly recalls the brutality being especially vicious in pregnancy. ‘People were writing things like, “She’s got the baby in her thighs. Look at the size of her! She’s eaten the baby.” How can anybody write that? But I had no worth for myself. I didn’t look after myself. I was three stone heavier than I am now and I’d kind of lost myself,’ she says.It was signing up to Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins in 2022 that finally forced her to confront the trauma of life with Richardson that she’d spent years burying. She was stripped back both physically and psychologically in the gruelling show. ‘It just all came out,’ she says now. ‘It was like the best therapy session ever. It was something I’d buried so deep and never ever spoken about.’Jennifer had reached 14 stone before appearing on Celebrity SAS, then lost around three stone following the show. She says it transformed both her confidence and her relationship with exercise. ‘I just thought, “Let’s just go and do it, and put myself in these awful situations because it’s a job, and it’s getting me back on telly,”’ she says. ‘I started to love myself again.’Surrounded by ultra-fit contestants, she believed she would be the weakest link. ‘I was the middle-aged mum who was going to be out first,’ she says with a laugh. Instead she endured almost to the very end and what followed became one of the most transformational experiences of her life. ‘I didn’t think it would break me the way it did. But I needed it to break me to realise how unbroken I was and how strong I was,’ she admits.During filming she unknowingly pushed herself through agonising injuries including broken ribs, a damaged spleen and internal bleeding after jumping from a helicopter. ‘I’ve never experienced pain like it. I couldn’t take a deep breath,’ she recalls. ‘That was on day three and I continued for another six days. It’s unbelievable what you can do if you don’t give up. It made me realise that I’d given up on myself before.’After the show Jennifer fell in love with the gym, focusing on strength and healthy eating. And she began to believe she might still have value beyond being simply a mum and a former celebrity. And with all this, her values have changed too. ‘When I was in Brookside I took all these opportunities for granted. But going back after such a big gap I’m much more appreciative,’ she says.That maturity has also shaped the way she mentors the young performers at Jelli Studios, many of whom are now performing around the world on cruise ships, in West End productions and on major stage tours. ‘I don’t sugar-coat it. You’ve got to have resilience. And I think one thing I’ve had to be is resilient,’ she says.There is none of the brittle desperation that sometimes accompanies celebrity comebacks. If anything, Jennifer is relieved to have survived it at all. ‘I haven’t had an easy ride, but it’s made me stronger,’ she says. Then she pauses for a moment before adding, ‘Everything that’s happened to me has led to this day and led to now.’G’wed, Monday, 10.35pm, ITV2 and ITVX.As told to Lisa Sewards