Sheridan Smith is bulking up for her new role as a troubled police officer in Australia.
Throwing herself into preparations for ITV’s Two Birds, which will soon begin filming in the Outback, Ms Smith has signed up to an upmarket £2,350 bootcamp programme to gain muscle that has placed her on a strict eating plan along with a hardcore exercise regime.
The Mrs Biggs and Cilla star, 44, is playing Constable Izzie Cornwell, who moves Down Under to rebuild her life after she is widowed.
In the six-parter, Ms Smith’s character, who has a self-destructive streak, is assigned to the murder investigation into a death in a notorious local crime family.
Photographs on the versatile actress’s Instagram account show her working out, and last week she was pictured learning to ride a motorbike. Ms Smith told her social media followers that she has ‘no days off’.
Talking to comedian Romesh Ranganathan on his podcast, Ms Smith said that she was looking forward to the action-packed project, adding: ‘My next job is a drama in Australia. I have to learn to ride a motorbike and have combat training – I’ve got to beef up.’
Sheridan last bulked up for the BBC drama The Moorside in 2017, winning rave reviews for her portrayal of Julie Bushby in the story about Shannon Matthews’ disappearance in 2008.
She recently finished her stage run in Glasgow of Alan Ayckbourn’s Woman In Mind, and had been looking increasingly thin during her stint playing a housewife on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
But as well as signing up to the intense programme with 1st Class Bootcamp to get in shape, the star has been undergoing a gruelling schedule of stunts and fight choreography.
Ms Smith will be back on TV on Sunday night in The Cage, a BBC thriller in which she plays a crooked casino croupier falling foul of gangsters.
