Tamzin Outhwaite found it difficult to quit \'EastEnders\' for a second time.
The 49-year-old actress first joined the BBC soap as Mel Healy in 1998 and left after three years to pursue other roles but Tamzin admitted that departing the soap again in 2019 after rejoining in 2017 was harder because she was more concerned about financial stability.
She told The Guardian: "When I hit 40, there were fewer scripts coming in. It did feel like I wasn\'t playing the leads in things, but that\'s fine by me. I\'m an ensemble actor, I really like to be in a company. I\'m not desperate to have all of the responsibility on my shoulders. I haven\'t really got much to moan about.
"[It was harder to leave \'EastEnders\' the second time] because you\'re older and you\'ve got kids and the security\'s actually quite lovely, it did feel different. I thought: \'I wonder how I\'m going to be able to move back into the acting world after this time round.\' But it\'s been pretty nonstop. Until Covid."
And Tamzin also revealed that she never thought she had "made it", even when she first landed a role in the BBC soap in 1998.
She explained: "I thought: \'This is just another acting job. It doesn\'t mean that you\'ve made it, because then you\'ve got a whole heap of career to continue.\'
"To go from job to job, that was success, that was enough for me. I wasn\'t desperate to play a lead at the National. I really wanted to be in \'Cats\' the musical and that was kind of it."
