Mary Shelley: her scandalous life will make must-see TVĬolin Clive and Boris Karloff in Frankenstein, Mary Shelley’s staggering creation. Good for Jarvis for explaining how how actors, and how people, work, because that’s what most people simply have to do. It reminded me of an old reality TV competition theme, in which a contestant would be promised that they’d never have to go back to working in a shop again, like it was some shameful prison from which everyone must be desperate to escape. It wasn’t so much the notion that Jarvis was doing a non-acting job so much as the emphasis on the fact that it was in a shop if she had been working as a part-time lecturer, say, would it have even made it in to print? (With apologies to working-class lecturers, of course, but it just sounds like a fancy job.) “Person gets job so her kids don’t starve? Good for her,” tweeted Kathy Burke.īut there was something else. The support for Jarvis, too, came quickly. Given those stats, it’s unusual that we find it so unusual for an actor to be doing something other than performing, even if they once had a starring role on a big show.įamously, The Cosby Show’s Geoffrey Owens was snapped working in a US supermarket last year, leading to accusations of “job-shaming” and an outpouring of support from the industry. Research suggests that only 2% of actors make a living from acting, while 90% are out of work at any one time. I don’t know if it’s because we expect performers to maintain the illusion of being someone else, lest we start to realise that the stories we are glued to are made of scripts and sets and real people dressed up and pretending, but we all know that the entertainment business is tough and fickle.

Jarvis left the soap in February this year and at some point started working at B&M, where her sister is also a security guard. “I woke up really embarrassed and really made to feel quite ashamed, to be honest,” she told Victoria Derbyshire last week. She ain’t my muvva! But she might be able to offer me a competitive rate on euros.Įven so, there was something sour and not quite end-of-episode-bong-worthy about a tabloid’s decision to put the actress Katie Jarvis on its front page after she was spotted working as a security guard. If I nipped to the post office and Kat Slater was selling stamps, I’d probably go back. Y ou can understand why seeing someone you know from EastEnders working in a shop might make you look twice.

Katie jarvis