Denise Van Outen

Denise Van Outen

Denise van Outen (born 27 May 1974, Basildon, Essex) is an English actress and television presenter. Her most notable roles to date are as a presenter on The Big Breakfast, and as Roxie Hart in the musical Chicago on both the West End and on Broadway.

Born as Denise Kathleen Outen in Basildon, Essex, Denise is the youngest of three siblings. Her sister is a mother and housewife and her brother is a suit tailor.

At the age of seven, she began modelling for knitting patterns, and showed an early flair for performing. This resulted in her attending the Sylvia Young Theatre School. As a student, she played Eponine in Les Misérables alongside fellow Sylvia Young student Melanie Blatt (the role paid her school fees), the Anthony Newley directed production of Stop the World – I Want to Get Off, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

As a teenager she had brief roles on a number of television dramas including Kappatoo, She also sang with Cathy Warwick in “girl group” Those2Girls, by which time she had become Denise Van Outen. She also did backing vocals with Melanie Blatt for the band Dreadzone.

Van Outen has retained her distinct looks gracing the covers of popular men’s and Women’s titles and being voted both Rear of the Year in 1999, and top of a poll to find the most desired “bikini body” in a 2007 poll of readers of Grazia magazine.

During 1995, van Outen started her television career on Saturday morning ITV show Scratchy and Co’s mini youth programme Massive! Van Outen joined The Big Breakfast on Channel 4 as a weather and travel reporter in 1996 and landed the main co-presenting role in 1997. It proved to be her big breakthrough, with her cheeky “Essex Girl” personality and sexy clothing playing off well against the quick wit of Johnny Vaughan, and together they recovered audience figures to respectable levels.

She took a break from presenting the show towards the end of 1998 but returned in 2000 for a further year-long stint in an attempt to boost the ratings, which had tailed off following her departure. When the show closed down, van Outen gave Vaughan a present of a set of AMG wheels for his Mercedes Benz CLK – commented on as a “very Essex Girl” by Jeremy Clarkson when the pair appeared on the BBC’s Top Gear programme.

Van Outen then returned to television, reviving her on screen relationship with Johnny Vaughan in 2004 for one series of the BBC’s Saturday night family revival show “Passport to Paradise,”[ She continued in 2005 co-presenting ITV’s This Morning with Richard Bacon.

Van Outen was asked to be a panelist How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria? in 2006 for the BBC, a programme searching for a girl to play the role of Maria in The Sound of Music, but was unable to accept the offer due to commitments in the USA co-hosting NBC’s Grease: You’re the One that I Want!

After her commitments ended on the show she began re-establishing her television career in the UK. In November 2006, she hosted Sky1’s The Race – set at Silverstone Circuit – in which a celebrity Girls Team headed by David Coulthard raced against a celebrity Boys Team headed by Eddie Irvine. In December 2006, she hosted the National Lottery Christmas special, and in January 2007 hosted one show of The Friday Night Project. She also guested on The Charlotte Church Show, and was one of the judges at the Miss World pageant in Warsaw, Poland.

In 2007, she joined the panel for BBC One’s follow up to How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?, Any Dream Will Do! which was casting Joseph in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. After viewers on 9 June 2007 voted Lee Mead as the winner of Any Dream Will Do! – to play the role of Joseph in a revival at London’s Adelphi Theatre of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat van Outen said: “From the very beginning right through to the very end, Lee has been the most consistent out of all the contestants. He has the ability to make even really popular songs his own and he has his own unique style of performing. The next time he lands a role as a leading man, can he put me forward to be the leading lady?”

In July 2007, she appeared in a commercial advertising the rebranding of Morrisons supermarket, with a backing track from revived boy band Take That.

In 2008 Denise presented ‘Backstage at the Brit’s’ for ITV1 and continued with a new Saturday night entertainment series for ITV1, alongside Ben Shephard, called Who Dares Sings. Challenging 100 members of the studio audience to hit the right notes in the largest karaoke competition on TV. Her on screen presence continued with For One Night Only alongside Michael Buble and Hairspray: The School Musical for Sky One. The programme saw Denise mentor a group of regular school kids to put on their own version of Hairspray on the West End Stage. Denise also recently appeared in the BBC One drama Hotel Babylon on 24 July 2009.