A year ago soap star Mike Parr headed for the bright lights of LA – but he’s landed somewhere much closer to home.
The actor, who played Ross Barton in ITV’s Emmerdale, said he was leaving to follow his American dream.
But it looks like it didn’t go to plan – as he’s ended up 4,277 miles away from Hollywood... in Liverpool.
This week it was announced that Mike, 32, would be joining Sky One cop show Bulletproof, also starring Noel Clarke and Ashley Walters.
He said he had quit Emmerdale, where he’d been for five years, to try to crack La La Land.
Posting a picture of a suitcase last year, he wrote: “LA bound.”
At the time, his former soap co-star Adam Thomas joked that he’d struggle out there. “You’ll never make it,” he wrote.
“I said that to motivate you. Wish you all the luck in the world my friend go get em x”
Speaking last year about his decision, Mike said: “Leaving Emmerdale is scary; this is the first time since the age of 14 that I’ve not had a job, but it’s also exciting.”
He told a local newspaper in his hometown of St Helens in Merseyside that he was looking for an agent in the US and hoped to be in LA for pilot season in January.
“I wouldn’t want to become a regular on a soap in the US as I have just spent so long in ones,” he revealed.
“The kind of roles I’m looking forward to are still the baddie, but different kinds of storylines – maybe in an HBO box set or a Netflix show.
“I didn’t get into acting for money or anything. I want to earn enough obviously, but it’s about the art of it.”
He also admitted that “there are times I worry that I did the right thing leaving Emmerdale”.
