Former lads’ mag model Lisa Faulkner celebrates new beginning in her career after fearing she wouldn’t live to 45

AFTER her mum died of throat cancer aged 44, Lisa Faulkner feared she too would not live to see her 45th birthday.

But on February 19 this year, when she passed the milestone, the actress found herself enjoying a double celebration.

For Lisa had just been cast as feisty businesswoman Fi Browning in EastEnders.

Delighted to have landed her first major TV role since winning Celebrity MasterChef in 2010, she uncorked the champagne with TV chef boyfriend John Torode.

The star, whose mum Julie died when Lisa was 16, told Fabulous Daily: “I never saw my mother older than 44 so I just couldn’t see myself past that age in a way.

“It’s really weird when you have something like that in your head. So to get past it and to realise that, I feel so blessed.

“I suppose it’s made me go, ‘You know what? Life is out there, take it and grab it’.”

After Julie died in 1988, Lisa and her younger sister Victoria, then 14, found themselves looking after their dad, cooking at home and ironing his shirts.

Losing her mum made Lisa determined to grab every opportunity.

She says: “I have never been a person to go, ‘Oh no, I’m not going to do it’. I’ve always seen little signs in the road and, instead of walking past them, I’ve grabbed on to them.

“Sometimes things happen and you have a choice but I thought it’d be silly not to say yes to this.”

After finding fame with roles in Brookside, Spooks and Holby City, more recently Lisa has appeared in Death In Paradise and Murdoch Mysteries.

But despite a career already spanning 25 years, she was nervous about joining EastEnders.

John — no stranger to TV, having hosted MasterChef since 2005 — helped out by standing in for the formidable Shirley Carter (played by Linda Henry) so Lisa could learn her lines.

She says of her Aussie fella: “He’s so supportive, absolutely amazing.

“He’s been a very good Shirley, more of an Australian Shirley.”

And he won’t have to worry about Lisa taking on any steamy sex scenes.

She laughs: “I don’t think anyone would want to see me at 45! It’s very funny.”

Before moving into acting, Lisa was a successful model, who got scouted aged 16.

Early in her career she posed for saucy lads’ magazines.

She says: “I modelled for years before I acted and, when I was acting, there were loads of those ‘lad mags’ that came out.

“As an actress, you did them all. It was just like, ‘Do you wanna do it?’ ‘Yeah, why not? I’m young, they airbrush you and you look pretty damn good!’

“Now I think there would be a lot more airbrushing involved. I don’t regret the shoots at all.

“People sometimes post the images on Twitter and I go, ‘I used to look like that!’”

EastEnders is a British institution and even the biggest names have confessed to feeling overwhelmed on the show’s set.

Lisa says: “It’s daunting going on to EastEnders. It’s a big machine and there’s loads of lines.

“I saw a bit of filming in the Vic, so I could get my head round it. I did the first scene and once we’d done the rehearsal, I thought, ‘Ah, I know how to do this!’ I’ve been doing it for 25 years.”

For now Lisa is tight-lipped about her character’s motivations — but she does not mind revealing that Fi will be an arch manipulator.

She says: “Fi is a businesswoman.

“She can wind people around her finger easily. She has always got what she wants.”

Lisa would like to see her character do well and not get killed off.

She says: “I begged to die in Holby, I wanted to have a gruesome death and I remember saying to the show’s producers, ‘Please make it gruesome! Please can I die?’

“Then it was only about a year later, I thought, ‘Oh, I can’t go back now!’ You can’t go back once you’re dead — so I hopefully won’t meet a horrible end just yet.”