Emmerdale's Samantha Giles is up for the Best Comedy Performance gong for her portrayal of Bernice Blackstock at the British Soap Awards tonight.
The 51-year-old first started on the show in 1998 and has departed and returned to the Dales numerous times since, with her most recent comeback being in 2021.
But while her character might be amusing, Samantha claims in real life she is actually "quite boring" - though we're sure many people would be quick to disagree.
That's because the actress identifies as a Wiccan - a follower of a modern pagan religion - and claims to have met her production manager husband, Sean Pritchard, after casting a love spell.
Speaking to OK! in 2020, she said: "I met him three months after the spell.
"It's about things being aligned. Sometimes people say to me, 'I put this thought out there and it didn't work!' But sometimes things aren't in the right place so you have to let them go until it's time."
Samantha went on to elaborate on the spell to The Mirror, claiming she uses candles and crystals to facilitate spells and writes down exactly what she wants.
"I wrote down exactly what I was after. Then I met Sean and he was exactly what I had written.
"It's as if he appeared by magic! You have to be very specific about what you're looking for, and one thing I forgot to put down was for him to be older than me. I put taller, as well as details about his personality and morality.
"Then when I met Sean and we started seeing each other, he was two-and-a-half years younger than me. I thought, 'This feels a bit weird', but it didn't take me long to get over it.’"
The soap star married Sean in 2010, but her husband isn't a believer in her spells and thinks it's "nonsense" - though she insists it's not "bonkers".
"A lot of people think all that stuff is nonsense – my husband thinks it's all nonsense – so I'm kind of used to people thinking it's a bit strange, but I think it's just whatever works for you," she told OK!
"It's not like I'm running around with a pair of pants on my head or anything. I'm quite boring really. Most people are interested in finding out about it, especially if they have a very positive outlook on life.
"Sean will sometimes laugh if I say something he thinks is a bit daft, but he totally accepts me. He won't let me do reiki (hands-on healing) on him because he doesn't believe in it, which I think is sad as I think if he opened his mind a bit he\d really benefit from it. But he certainly isn't obstructive in any way."
Samantha also believes she and Sean met in a past life - but their genders were reversed.
She discussed this on the Wonderbirds YouTube show, claiming that in a past life she was a man working on a fairground and "looked like [her] husband".
"I had black curly hair and the woman that I was marrying, if you like, looked like me now," she explained.
"So when I met my husband, I had this feeling of meeting him when I saw him – 'I know you, I've met you before.' So it was almost as if we'd looked like each other in another life."
Samantha's love spell came after experiencing some bad luck in the relationship department.
She says she was inspired to do the spell after coming out of a "disastrous" relationship as she didn't want to mess around with any "waste-of-space" boyfriends.
Sean and Samantha have gone on to have two daughters, Olivia and Eve and the family lives in Liverpool along with their cat, Bob.
The commute to film in Leeds is long, but Samantha is grateful to be able to juggle motherhood and a career.
She told The Mirror: "So many actors are out of work, and soap is very good for when you have a family. If I wasn't doing this I'd have to be quite choosy about what I did – I couldn’t do a big theatre tour or take a job where I had to be away for six months. If I've chosen to have children then I want to actually be with them."
However, the road to becoming a parent was difficult, with Samntha experiencing a "very bad birth" with her first daughter and then suffering "terrible" post-natal depression.
"I felt so awful," she told OK!
"There is nothing more challenging than looking after babies or children."
Her second pregnancy was much easier though and within six weeks of giving birth, Samantha was back at work on the Emmerdale set and has recalled breastfeeding in the canteen.
The mum, who has since written two children's books about witches, has also spoken about what her daughters think of her spirituality.
She told the publication that they're at an age where they don't really tell her their feelings, but if they are concerned about something they will ask her to do some reiki on them.
While raising her kids, Samantha also battled a "scary" health condition in secret.
In 2022, she revealed that in her early 40s she'd been suffering with a painful condition for two years, having a chronic urinary tract infection, but was initially misdiagnosed by doctors.
"I had an embedded infection and it was scary," she told The Mirror.
"You are frightened of going to the shops or going out because you are constantly thinking about when you are going to need to use the toilet. It's depressing."
UTIs can sometimes occur when women reaching the menopause find their oestrogen levels are starting to lower. This means their bodies have less immunity to fight things off.
After such a bad previous experience, it's something Samantha is very wary of happening again during menopause.
Eventually, her body fought the infection off, but the actress has called for better testing across GP surgeries and on-the-spot testing.
