After Dinner Speakers: Tamzin Outhwaite, Little Richard, Seal

Tamzin Outhwaite is best known for playing Melanie in EastEnders. But that's all about to change as starring roles in BBC drama are coming thick and fast. And that's forgetting Tamzin's accomplished stage career. Tamzin attended the Stagestruck Theatre Company as a young teenager. At 16 she left school to join the London Studio Centre to study drama and dance. She left with that year's trophy for best all-rounder, which had previously been won by Liz Hurley. Before television fame grabbed her in EastEnders, Tamzin had bit parts in The Bill and Men Behaving Badly. Tamzin's many stage roles have included: Summer Holiday, Grease, Carousel, Oliver and Absent Friends. She starred in military drama series Red Cap (after a successful pilot last Christmas) and has won acclaim for her role in the award-winning improvised drama Out of Control. She appears as devious Natalie in Final Demand with Simon Pegg (Spaced), based on the novel by the multi-award winning novelist and screenwriter Deborah Moggach. In 1987 Tamzin appeared as a presenter on the youth show No Limits (billed as 'Tammi Outhwaite'). Tamzin appeared in U2's music video for their song Mysterious Ways. In 2001 she presented a BBC documentary about the positive effects garnered by the relationship between man and dolphins.