Emily Atack interview: Photoshoots, happiness and fame

Emily Atack feels proud of her “womanly body” and and has no regrets about doing photoshoots for lads’s mags early in her career.

The 30-year-old actress says: “I have my FHM covers framed, I don’t feel shame. I did those things because I wanted to and I loved those shoots.

“If you’ve got it and you want to flaunt it, then flaunt it. I will probably show my grandkids. I was celebrating my womanly body.”

Emily revealed she’s currently the happiest she’s ever been and it’s taken years for her to embrace her curves admitting: “My whole life I have been called fat. Even when I was two stone lighter, I was always the curvier one.

“The first time I was on ‘The Inbetweeners‘ people started talking about my weight. People weren’t used to seeing someone with a bit of shape. It was a bit different.

Emily played Charlotte in her first recurring role, between 2008 and 2010. In the intervening nine years she picked up a few presenting gigs here and there — Sunday Brunch, Big Brother’s Little Brother — and one-off roles in shows like Father Brown and Birds of a Feather.

“As I’m getting older it’s about being healthy and happy. I am the biggest I’ve ever been – but I am the most successful I’ve ever been.”

Before being majorly thrust to the public conscious on I‘m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! Emily Atack revealed: “I wasn’t getting all the roles I felt like I should have been. I was at a crossroads. I was like, ‘I need to put a rocket up my arse.’”

Now “I’m fascinated by how may people care about the [things I do]”, though something as small as talking to a friend can spiral into a media frenzy. ‘Most of my guy friends who I’ve been spotted chatting to have become my mystery man [in the press],’ laughs Emily.