EastEnders actor Michelle Collins has said she didn’t always get along with her on-screen husband Adam Woodyatt, who plays the long-running character Ian Beale.
Collins, 62, joined the BBC soap in 1988 as Ian’s wife Cindy, but she was killed off in 1998 before miraculously returning to Albert Square using a fake alias 25 years later, in 2023.
In a new interview with The Times, Collins revealed that she and Woodyatt got off to a rocky start, stating: “He and I didn’t always get on in the early days but there’s a lot more love and respect in midlife.”
Collins has previously said that much of their bickering was down to the fact they were both young actors. Woodyatt joined the original cast of EastEnders aged 16, with Collins arriving three years when she was 26.
Last year, she told The One Show : “We don't row anymore. We used to row all the time. We'd kind of grown up together. We used to bicker. They used to call us George and Mildred.”
She added: “We were very different, but now it's kind of come full circle. We’ve both been through so much in our lives as people and I think we respect each other so much now. I love Adam, I’m so fond of Adam. He’s been so supportive.”
Woodyatt and Collins portrayed Ian and Cindy as they plunged into married life, and it was turbulent from the start.
After they first wed in 1989 and Cindy was pregnant with her son Steven, she confessed to a fling with Simon Wicks (Nick Berry), confirming that Steven was not Ian's son. Ian eventually forgave Cindy, and they became parents to twins Peter and Lucy.
When their marriage broke down, Cindy hired a hitman to have Ian killed – he was shot but made a full recovery. Cindy went to prison while pregnant with a new man’s baby, and was said to have died during childbirth in 1998, survived by Cindy Junior (Mimi Keene).
When Cindy was seen alive and well living in France in 2023, she returned to the square, and remarried Ian, who had been wed three times in their time apart, to Mel Owen, Laura Beale and Jane Beale. Since her return, Cindy has cheated on Ian several times.
Collins has revealed that playing a character so cruel has had an impact on her day-to-day life, saying that she often gets stopped by fans who question Cindy’s actions.
“Viewers love to hate my character, Cindy. I get stopped on the street more when she’s naughty,” Collins said. “People ask why she’s so horrible to Ian, her husband — they’re always fighting, like George and Mildred.”
Earlier this month, Collins announced that she was taking a temporary break from the soap to make her debut at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this summer, as the lead in the one-woman play titled Motorhome Marilyn.
She will play the wannabe actor Ruthie Richards, who is working as a Marilyn Monroe impersonator after a failed attempt to make it in Hollywood.
The actor said it was “nice to go off and do something” different after playing Cindy for so long, stating: “Years ago, they didn’t let people go off and do many things – maybe the odd panto or something.”
She said that when she broached the idea with the soap’s “very new lovely producer”, he had replied: “Maybe we can make it work.”
Collins said she will “feel re-energised” when she returns to Albert Square. “You’re doing a continuing drama, continuing throughout the year, it’s good for the soul, it’s good to go and do something else,” she said.
