FORMER Sky Sports star Charlotte Jackson Coleman’s harrowing new acting role begins with a brutal murder and descends into a dark exploration of a twisted family past.
Psychological thriller Secrets, which is released on Prime Video on August 19, sees Charlotte, 47, in the lead role as single mum Sammy who is determined to unravel the murky goings on in her hometown.
It’s worlds away from her career as a journalist and sports presenter when she rubbed shoulders with Premier League footballers and even presented Lionel Messi – widely considered the greatest player of all time – with the first of his record-breaking eight Ballon d’Or Awards.
Charlotte, who is married to former Wales manager Chris Coleman , even had crossover success in primetime entertainment hosting 71 Degrees North alongside Paddy McGuinness back in 2010.
But her desire to pursue a lifelong passion of acting led her to retrain through Covid and she has now landed her biggest role to date.
Speaking exclusively to The Sun, she says: “I did love my job. I love working in sport. It’s not until I look back and think, ‘oh my God, I did that’. I gave Lionel Messi his first Ballon d’Or because I was hosting that in 2009.”
The glittering end of season ceremony was co-hosted by Pedro Pinto and featured a who’s who of stars in the audience including Cristiano Ronaldo and female superstar Marta, who Charlotte interviewed on stage after she picked up her fifth best player in the world gong.
Reflecting on her encounter with Messi now, she says: “I do remember thinking that I towered over him, but he was very nice unassuming and no ego about him. I had a photo with him I think it was before I had a camera phone so it’s old-fashioned printed out.
“It’s not until I look back that I realise what a momentous occasion that was. My son’s even used the photo for a presentation at school about Messi.”
Though a switch to acting meant she would have to start from the bottom and work her way up, having already reached the pinnacle of one profession, Charlotte was determined to make it work.
Emotionally draining auditions and low-paid independent roles didn’t deter her from pursuing her dream, and now that she’s landed the biggest role of her acting career to date, she has no plans to return to presenting any time soon.
She says: “I have thought to myself, ‘I need to concentrate on this’, and it is actually what I’ve wanted to do since I was younger, and I do love it.
“I love presenting, but this is totally different. I hate the fact when I’m not acting and I’m watching something, I’m like, ‘oh my God, I wish I was in that’.
“At the moment, I wouldn’t go back to it, it’s not to say I never would, but I am definitely making a conscious decision to just concentrate on acting and put that on the back burner.”
Secrets’ tense trailer is a heart-stopping affair with tears and anguish in abundance.
Charlotte says: “I quite often would have music in my ear, because that quickly sort of transcends me into the sort of emotion that I need, especially for the very emotional scenes.
“But then a lot of it is being in the moment. My scene partners are great. My daughter, Anna, her real name’s Anna, but she was Ava in the film, we had a really good rapport and relationship, and we sort of fed off each other.
“I think when you’re doing really emotional stuff, if you do get it in that first take, it’s very difficult to emulate it again and do the same thing, or get back into that. It’s a combination of the director, scene partners, and characters on research.
“I’ve got a daughter and a son, so I was substituting my daughter, and yeah, that does very quickly get you there as well.”
Last year, Fool Me Once, starring Michelle Keegan , was a runaway global hit, topping the most watched list on Netflix .
The British thriller, based on a Harlan Coben novel, kept viewers gripped as they wrestled with who to trust and the peril Keegan’s character found herself in following the ‘murder’ of her husband.
Charlotte hopes Secrets will appeal to the same audience.
She says: “As long as people know about the film, I think they will love it. Fool Me Once, you get to know the characters, don’t you? And it’s quite a slow build.
“Our film starts off with something quite big, it’s a murder. And then it sort of builds and builds and builds, and the tension sort of sucks you in until you’re like, ‘is it this person? Is it that person? Are they good? Are they bad?'”
In fact, one of Charlotte’s dreams is to appear in a Coben adaptation.
The American writer is one of the most prolific out there and in recent years his works have been adapted around the world, though he has had particular success in the UK, with his US based novels translating surprisingly well to UK destinations.
Philip Barantini (Adolescence and Boiling Point), The Innocents’ Farren Blackburn, and Daniel O’Hara are all directors she would love to work with.
It was another industry bigwig that gave Charlotte the confidence to pursue acting.
In a chance encounter, Nick Manzi, former head of Lionsgate UK, visited the set of the Keith Lemon: The Film in which Charlotte had a small role as a reporter.
He dubbed her ‘One Take Jackson’ on account of her easy nature in front of the camera and ability to nail her lines.
She says: “I think it’s from being on live TV that I just sort of did it, and he was saying that I had good comic timing, he said ‘you really should do this’.
“I didn’t really know how to make that jump, he was going, ‘oh, you should, you know, email some agents’, but I had nothing really.
“So I kind of thought, ‘okay, I like the idea of it’, but I wasn’t very proactive about it, and I think it’s because I had a mortgage to pay, I had my job, blah, blah, blah, but it stayed with me.”
It was when she was living in China, where her husband was managing Hebei China Fortune, that she finally took the steps needed to make her dream a reality.
During Covid, she was able to train remotely, and once restrictions lifted, she threw herself into short films, one of which, A Positive Contribution, earned her a Best Actress nomination at the Romford Film Festival, alongside Tamzin Outhwaite .
Though there’s part of her that wishes she started sooner, Charlotte believes her life experience has been integral to getting her to the point she now is.
She says: “The other part’s like, well, I’ve had a good career doing other things, and would I take rejection as well if I was younger? Maybe not, I don’t know, it’s difficult as well, because of age, coming in later, there are less roles for my age group, that’s just a fact.
“I think things happen for a reason, I think had I done it when I was younger, I probably would have stopped and had to do something else.”
