Beth Foot Forward : Allen In Shortland Street Interview…

In an interview with Ellen Irvine, Beth Allen opens up and talks about her past growing up, as she relates her life-experiences to those her character Brooke Freeman goes through in the New Zealand soap.

Beth talks about her teen friendships aswell as other issues.

“I’ve felt really wobbly and let down by friends,” Beth said. “I can sympathise with that feeling feeling like you know a person and not really knowing them very much at all”.

The interview appeared in The Sunday News and can also be read online and is pasted below. Beth Allen featured in The Tribe as Amber and has had notable guest spots in Power Rangers and Outrageous Fortune.

Beth also featured in the Five Things You Didn’t Know… feature on the Shortland Street site. Here’s the list…

About Beth Allen

1. She’s left handed

2. She has fused vertebrae – the lower half of her back is held in place with titanium screws. (Everyone asks her if she sets off airport metal detectors… she doesn’t!)

3. By the age of four Beth could recite entire scripts of Blackadder and The Young Ones (as a result of having much older siblings)

4. Her great uncle set up Plunket

5. One of the great joys in Beth’s life? New episodes of The Family Guy!

The article on Beth is below…

Beth foot forward
ELLEN IRVINE – Sunday News | Sunday, 25 January 2009

WHEN Shortland Street bosses told Beth Allen she would have to portray a person in the throes of a meltdown she leapt at the challenge.

The 24-year-old actress who plays troubled GP Brooke Freeman has first-hand knowledge of what it’s like when someone starts to lose the plot having helped mates through it in the past.

“I had friends when we were growing up those teen years can be really hard, it’s a really stressful time,” she told Sunday News.

“I had friends who were going through a really emotional time and they would get really upset and you’d have to talk them out of the bathroom.

“I think most of the audience could relate to that.”

This week Brooke finds out just how evil and deadly the love of her life Ethan Pierce (Owen Black) really was blowing all her beliefs out of the water.

It sparks her to lose her mind even walking into oncoming traffic in an apparent suicide attempt.

Beth admits that in real life, she too has been betrayed by people close to her causing her to question her own judgment.

“I’ve felt really wobbly and let down by friends,” Beth said. “I can sympathise with that feeling feeling like you know a person and not really knowing them very much at all.

“I don’t want to elaborate too much but it’s just these situations when you trust someone and they let you down. It makes you question your judgment a bit and that’s what’s happening with Brooke. She’s questioning her whole view on the world.”

While the closest Beth has ever come to a cat-fight is watching a group of girls fight in a bus stop, Brooke gets into her second cat-fight with enemy Alice Piper (Toni Potter) this week.

“It’s in the cafeteria and it’s one of those ones which is pretty impromptu and embarrassing for both girls,” she said.

“There is a lot of hair-pulling and slapping and food flung everywhere as well, that was fun.”

It was Beth’s first chance to hit a girl as the “completely non-confrontational wuss” was turned off fighting after a scarring teenage experience.

“I remember when I was about 13 witnessing a fight between some girls in a bus stop in New Lynn. It was the most horrific thing I’ve ever seen, that was enough,” she laughed.

Shortland Street, weeknights, 7pm, TV2