Hannah Waddingham Reveals She Was Told By Teacher She Had Wrong Face For The Screen

deadline.com:

Hannah Waddingham, the Emmy-winning Ted Lasso star, says the words of a teacher helped fuel her ambition to become a star of the screen.

Waddingham told a BBC podcast that a teacher insulted her appearance, but instead of it being a dispiriting experience, she used it to galvanize her work ethic. “I had one drama teacher that said to the whole class: ‘Oh Hannah will never work on screen because she looks like one side of her face has had a stroke,'” the actress said. “I thought, I will do.

Come hell or high water, I will work on screen.” Waddingham told Michelle Visage’s Rule Breakers podcast that the words did give her a complex and that the teacher must have known the remarks were “not helpful or positive or aspirational.” The actress, who plays Richmond FC owner Rebecca Welton in Apple TV+’s Ted Lasso, said the teacher’s comments partly influenced her Emmy acceptance speech in 2021.

After picking up the prize for best supporting actress in a comedy series, she called on decision-makers in the room to give West End theatre performers a screen break. “In my Emmys speech, I made a point – the one thing I said to myself [was], if this weird moment comes and I get this award, and I get my foot in this door, I’m going to rip it off its hinges for music theatre people, or theatre people, to follow,” she said.