Hannah Louise Spearritt (born 1 April 1981 in Great Yarmouth, England) is an English actress and former pop star.
She got her start on the stage, performing with the National Youth Theatre in productions of Annie, Bugsy Malone, Pendragon and Tin Pan Ali. She also managed to get appearances on Blue Peter and a Made-for-TV Movie called The Cater Street Hangman. But that's probably not what you know her for.
Hannah rose to international fame as part of the musical septet S Club 7. As part of the group, she released four albums and starred in four seasons of a TV spin-off, four additional Made For TV Movies to tie in with the series, a feature film (playing a fictionalised version of herself), and a documentary series about the group's search for their individual endangered animals (Hannah was the only one not to find hers — the Monk Seal). S Club decided to split in 2003, but Hannah continued her acting, and has had some of the most solo success of the group.
She landed significant roles in Seed of Chucky and Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London, but eventually found her feet as Abby Maitland in the sci-fi series Primeval. She has also made appearances on Eastenders (of which she had been a big fan beforehand), and of course in the occasional reunion with S Club 7.
Selected Filmography:
- The Cater Street Hangman (1998)
- S Club 7:
- Miami 7 (1999)
- LA 7 (2000)
- Hollywood 7 (2001)
- Viva S Club (2002)
- S Club: Seeing Double (2003)
- Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London (2004)
- Seed of Chucky (2004)
- Primeval (2007-2011)
- CASUAL+Y (2016)
- Eastenders (2017-present)
Her uncle is also Eddie Spearritt, a footballer who played for Ispwich, Brighton, Carlisle and Gillingham.
Tropes associated with her work:
- A-Cup Angst: She's become a spokesperson for Petite Pride after health problems caused by getting breast implants.
- Actor Allusion:
- In the sitcom Blessed she plays a member of a Girl Group.
- In the Season 4 premiere of Primeval, Abby plays S Club's "Don't Stop Moving" to distract a dinosaur.
- Billing Displacement: She is billed second in the film Utopia, despite being less prominent than the other Afghan characters.
- Boyish Short Hair: She sported short hair for the first three seasons of Primeval playing the tomboyish Abby. Averted when she had short hair for the Hollywood 7 period (presumably because Jo was already filling The Lad-ette role). Hannah decided to grow her hair out after Season 3 - which gets justified by Abby spending a whole year trapped in the Cretaceous Period - and Abby got a slight Girliness Upgrade as a result.
- Break Up Breakout: In terms of acting, she's had the most success of S Club - though Jon did become a West End star, and Rachel had some solo success as well.
- Contractual Purity: As she had a family friendly image during her time with S Club 7, she attempted to shake it off by taking a role in the horror film Seed of Chucky and providing a more Fanservicey image in Primeval.
- Costume Backlash: When shown a clip from the Sunshine album and Hollywood 7 period of her time in S Club 7, she cringed at the short hair she sported and said "way too short".
- Creator Backlash: She's been rather open about the fact that she'd like to not go back to music, admitting she's not much of a singer, and she much prefers acting. Whenever S Club have reunited, the only time she was part of it was for the BBC Children in Need telethon in 2015. She was planning to take part in a reunion in 2023, but dropped out over sadness at Paul Cattermole's sudden death just weeks after it was announced.
- A Day in the Limelight: She gets to sing lead vocals on the S Club songs "Dance Dance Dance" and "Hey Kitty Kitty", and shares lead vocals with Tina on "Stand By You".
- The Ditz: She portrayed herself as one for the S Club TV series.
- Dye Hard: Naturally blonde but had platinum blonde hair for Primeval. The dye ruined her hair and she had to go brown briefly. She's also had pink hair for her time in Casualty.
- I Am Not Spock: She joked in an interview for Netflix that she sometimes felt as though her full name was 'Hannah S Club'."In terms of like being forever known as being part of S Club 7, no it's not a problem."
- Identical Stranger: Emma Bunton from The Spice Girls, ironically (as both were bands managed by the same producers Simon Fuller and 19 Entertainment).
- Playing Against Type: Having either played ditzes or Action Girls, she went against type by playing a drug dealer in Casualty.
- Real Life Writes the Hairstyle:
- For the S Club: Seeing Double movie, she has red in her hair. Before filming, she'd spontaneously coloured the ends red, and director Nigel Dick liked it, and had her keep it for the film.
- Abby's hair is much shorter and spikier in Season 3 of Primeval because the bleach ruined Hannah's hair sometime after Season 2, first requiring her to go brown and then cutting it short.
- She also grew her hair out when Primeval was first cancelled and so Abby has long hair for the first time in the series in the fourth (it was Un-Cancelled and picked up by the BBC), which was easily explained by having her trapped in the Cretaceous period with Connor for a year. She wore extensions to make them look wilder for the first couple of episodes, and then removed them to show that Abby had adjusted to returning.
- Romance on the Set:
- Tom Hanks Syndrome: In The New '10s, she has moved away from comedies and sci-fi to star in Soap Operas as well as her turn in the Afghan film Utopia - a gritty drama about a Muslim woman who tries to get IVF, and was nearly an Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film.
- Vocal Evolution: Early in her career, you could hear hints of her original Norfolk accent - particularly in the S Club TV series when she said words like "cow" or "about". Since then her accent has simply faded to a more typical RP dialect.
