Former Holby City star Amanda Mealing's new role: 'I was mugged but I wasn't going to play a hero for real'

By Vicki Power
Updated: 05:29 EDT, 19 August 2011

Actress Amanda Mealing plays a tough commando in charge of a crack team of SAS soldiers in the new series of Strike Back.

She is meant to be smart, cool and combative — as practised with a gun as she is with her physical fighting skills.

So the muggers who surrounded the actress at a cash dispenser and demanded that she hand over her card could have found they had more than met their match.

'A role I couldn't resist': Amanda Mealing as Colonel Eleanor Grant

But Amanda, 44, knows there is a world of difference between on-screen action and the potentially fatal consequences of the real thing, so she gave them her card without resistance.

‘I didn’t know if they were armed with guns and knives, but I was in danger of finding out if I’d tried to argue with them,’ she says. ‘It’s what the police always advise: Don’t try to be a hero.’

The incident happened in Cape Town when Amanda — who spent six years in BBC1 medical drama Holby City as cardiothoracic consultant Connie Beauchamp — was filming Strike Back.

‘I’d pulled into a petrol station and went into a glass booth to use the cash machine,’ she says. ‘Four men appeared out of nowhere and blocked me in. They were pretending to help, but their leader, a really big guy, grabbed hold of my card.’

Action-hero: Richard Armitage with Orla Brady

He told her to tap her number into the keypad, and when Amanda refused, the other  three muggers  started pushing her and shouting.

‘It was getting nasty, and I was very scared. So I put my hands up and said, “Okay, fine” — but I had to let them keep my card.’

Amanda cancelled her card immediately and lost no money, but the mugging left her unnerved.

She found herself in a vulnerable position even though her husband, screenwriter Richard Sainsbury, and her children Milo, 11, and Otis, nine, who were visiting her in South Africa, were yards away, inside the petrol station.

‘They had no idea it was going on,’ she says.

When she quit Holby City last autumn, Amanda was considering giving up acting. ‘I was exhausted and disillusioned,’ she says. ‘Drama budgets were being cut, and things were getting  worse.

‘I thought that instead of acting, I’d direct or produce short films. I also looked into studying to become a counsellor. I felt my own life experience would lend itself to that.’

The day after she gave birth to her second son, Amanda was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had a mastectomy, chemotherapy and  radiotherapy, but has made a full recovery.

Amanda’s lives on a farm in Lincolnshire, and it was partly her daily commute to the Holby City set in Elstree, Herts — a 200- mile return journey — that made her leave the series.

‘I’d get up at 4.30am, and work a 12-hour day in the studio. I missed my sons’ nativity plays, their school concerts — all the things that are really important to kids. That went on for six  years, and I decided I didn’t want to be away from Richard and  Milo and Otis any more. 

‘But then Strike Back came along and I couldn’t resist, because Colonel Eleanor Grant is a role that’s so me.

Pressures: Amanda Mealing, pictured here in Holby City, decided the pressure of a commute was too much to continue with the BBC show

‘I love all-action movies. I am trying to get my pilot’s licence, and I’m a huge fan of Formula One. My idea of heaven would be to go on Top Gear and to get my racing licence. So playing an SAS soldier is perfect.’

Strike Back, based on ex-SAS sergeant Chris Ryan’s bestseller, caused quite a stir when it debuted last year thanks to the casting of Spooks heartthrob Richard Armitage in an  action-hero role. Armitage played hunky soldier John Porter, oozing sex appeal in his khakis and two-day stubble. For the second series, Strike Back: Project Dawn, Armitage appears only in the first episode — as a hostage.

Two handsome newcomers, American actor Philip Winchester as Sgt Michael Stonebridge, and Australian Sullivan Stapleton as ex-soldier Damien Scott, supply the muscle for the rest of the series.

Amanda says she wasn’t fazed by stepping into the Spooks star’s boots. ‘It didn’t really bother me, because I’m a woman, and so it’s a very different thing. In fact, I play his boss.’

The second series has been bumped from six to 10 episodes thanks to Sky co-producing it with respected American network HBO. And the bombs, blasts and body count make for a high-octane thriller.

Amanda was offered the role after HBO and Sky screen-tested actresses in England and the U.S. ‘Apparently they saw lots of people, so it’s a huge compliment to get it,’ she says.

Strike Back: Project Dawn, starts this Sunday on Sky One