Amanda Holden is best on screen when she is being awful: well dressed, quick and not quite sorry. Cutting It gave her that part and she took it; most of what followed asked her to be nice, and the presenting took over.
Fi1m perspective
Mia Bevan arrives in Cutting It (2002) dressed for somewhere more expensive than the Manchester street she has landed on. Amanda Holden plays her the way she plays most of her screen parts, with a straight back, a good coat and the look of someone who has checked the prices and is not impressed. Mia is Finn Bevan's wife, opening a salon opposite Allie Henshall's, and she does not know what Allie and Finn have been to each other. Holden gives her a brittle, expensive surface, and the performance is at its best when Debbie Horsfield's script lets that surface be funny.
The part came after a decade of smaller work. Holden trained at Mountview and spent the 1990s in sketch comedy and guest roles, among them EastEnders and Jonathan Creek (1997), before The Grimleys (1998–2001) and Kiss Me Kate (1999–2001) made her a familiar face in comedy. Cutting It ran from 2002 to 2004 and was the first drama to build a strand around her. She went from it to the West End, taking the title role in Thoroughly Modern Millie (2003–2004), and then to the lead in ITV's Wild at Heart (2006–2008), opposite Stephen Tompkinson across three series. Since 2007 she has been a judge on Britain's Got Talent, and most of her work since has been presenting and radio rather than acting.
What she does well is charm with an edge on it. On stage, in Millie, the charm was the whole act and it carried the show, though not every critic thought the voice was big enough for the numbers, and we will not judge a performance we did not see. On screen the edge is the better instrument. We enjoyed Mia most in the stretches where Horsfield let her be rude, which in that cast, against Sarah Parish and Ben Daniels, meant holding her own in a room of quicker talkers, and we believed her least when the plot asked her to scheme in earnest and the calculation showed. Early notices on the series said the same. She has said as much herself: 'It's great playing bitches.' She found Wild at Heart hard going for the opposite reason, having to be pleasant all the time, and observed that the villains get the better clothes. Wild at Heart asked her to be nice for three series.
The result is an acting career with one good villain in it and a long stretch of being pleasant, which is the wrong way round for an actor whose face does disapproval better than warmth. If anyone casts her again, they should give her someone to be rude to, and a better coat than theirs.
Biography
Amanda Holden is an English actress and television presenter. Born in Portsmouth in 1971, she trained at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts. Her television credits include the role of Mia Bevan in the BBC drama series Cutting It (2002–2004).
She has appeared in other series such as The Grimleys (1998–2001), Kiss Me Kate (1999–2001) and Wild at Heart (2006–2008). On stage she played the title role in Thoroughly Modern Millie (2004), for which she received a Laurence Olivier Award nomination. Since 2007 she has served as a judge on the ITV talent competition Britain's Got Talent.
