Fay Ripley - Breakthrough Roles

Breakthrough Roles

In 1996, Ripley auditioned for Granada Television's Cold Feet, a television pilot about the romances of three couples living in Manchester. She believed she was reading for the role of Rachel, the "young, pretty one", and was surprised to discover that she was wanted for Jenny, the "northern housewife". In the audition, she performed with an inelegant approximation of a local Manchester accent. The producers found her approach to the role refreshing from other actresses, who were seen as too "finger-wagging". Ripley won the role, and appeared opposite John Thomson and James Nesbitt in the programme. After the pilot won an award, ITV's director of programmes commissioned a series of Cold Feet, so Ripley worked on improving her character's accent by speaking to locals and mimicking their speech. Her supporting character from the pilot episode was given a bigger role in the series; in the first episode (broadcast in 1998), Jenny gives birth to her first child. At that time, Ripley had never experienced childbirth, so copied birth scenes she had seen in other television series. An Independent review of the first series in November 1998 noted, "Fay Ripley has a range of quirky mannerisms that are more reminiscent of Elaine in Seinfeld than of any other Brit-com woman." The character also gained Ripley public recognition; after being noticed by a member of staff in Marks & Spencer, she was so pleased that she invited the woman to dinner.

Ripley's performance in the first series won her a nomination for Best TV Comedy Actress at the British Comedy Awards 1999. For her performance in the third series (2000), in which her character separates from her husband and dates another man (played by Ben Miles), she was nominated for the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress. During pre-production of the fourth series (2001), Ripley announced to the producers that she would be leaving the show, partly because she did not want to spend five months living in Manchester away from her home in London and wanted to spend more time with her husband, and partly to take other roles which she would otherwise not be able to do. She asked the writer Mike Bullen to either kill off Jenny or have her lose a limb. Bullen refused and instead wrote a plot in which Jenny moves to New York. Ripley returned to the series for a guest appearance in the final episode (2003). She had originally planned not to return to the show, but reprised the role so she could have an on-screen record of the final stages of her pregnancy with her first child.

In 2000, Ripley appeared in the British dogme film The Announcement, as well as playing lead female character Grace Bingley—opposite Paul Rhys—in the Granada television pilot I Saw You, which used many of the same production staff as Cold Feet. David Belcher of The Herald called Ripley "perfectly scatty, tousled and self-sufficient" in the role, and Joe Joseph of The Times complimented her comic timing. Ripley returned to I Saw You for a three-episode miniseries in 2002. She considers I Saw You, in which she acted alongside her husband Daniel Lapaine, the television show she is most proud to have worked on.