Martin Kemp reveals EastEnders role helped him recover after brain tumour
The Spandau Ballet bassist starred as Steve Owen in the BBC One soap opera between 1998 and 2002.
Martin Kemp has said that landing his role in EastEnders was “the thing that helped me recover, more than anything else” after he received a brain tumour diagnosis.
The Spandau Ballet bassist, 61, starred as Steve Owen in the BBC One soap opera between 1998 and 2002.
Speaking on the Dish podcast with Nick Grimshaw and Angela Hartnett, Kemp spoke candidly about how EastEnders helped his road to recovery: “When EastEnders was offered to me, it was like, everybody around me was saying, ‘Don’t do it, don’t do it. It’s going to ruin your career, don’t do it’. Well because they hadn’t had any name actors in that show before, right?
“Everybody had grown up with EastEnders, so I was kind of the first one of those name actors to go in.
“But when it was offered to me, it was only really about five years after I had gone through the whole brain tumour business, that I went through in the nineties, about 95, and so for me, I was struggling to get myself together and my brain wasn’t working properly still from the operation.
