Cristian Solimeno looked completely different compared to his day as Jason Turner.
The actor played the Earls Park F.C skipper in the first and second series of Footballers Wives’ back in the early noughties. The outrageous series about feuding WAGS took the UK by storm. and ruled the TV ratings from 2002 until its cancellation in 2006.
20 years after it premiered, the programme is enjoying a second life in the UK after being picked up by the streaming service BritBox last year and is now available to watch on ITVX.
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Jason was one of the biggest show’s biggest villains, along with his wife Tanya Turner, played by Zoe Lucker. He spent the first two seasons cheating on Tanya and feuding with Frank Laslett, before being killed off by Chardonnay Lane-Pascoe in 2003, who herself died shortly after from anorexia.
(Image: Unknown)
Given up for adoption by his biological parents, Jason was like a bull in a china shop, hurtling from affair to affair in between tormenting talon-clawed wife Tanya. And clean-living Cristian – who didn’t drink, smoke or eat red meat – had to give up his healthy ways to properly portray the destructive ageing footballer. He said at the time: “I’ve started drinking again, and puffing on big cigars… that’s Jason, he spirals out of control physically.
(Image: Brian Anderson/REX/Shutterstock)
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“Usually I’m an exercise fanatic and I rely on that as a coping mechanism, but I injured myself training for this. Jason’s always out drinking and I couldn’t even remember what it was like to be drunk. I hadn’t touched a drop for like, two years.” After plunging to his death at the hands of Chardonnay at the end of series two, Cristian starred in Wire in the Blood and Spooks before landing a role as Ray McCormick in Hollyoaks.
(Image: ITV)
Ray was a gangster who had a feud with Fraser Black and Trevor Royle. In March 2014, Ray was supposedly murdered by Fraser’s daughter, Grace Black. He appeared in eight episodes of the Channel 4 soap before getting bumped off.
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
