EastEnders’ icon Patsy Kensit opens up about her ‘Phil Mitchell crush’

ok.co.uk:

A gruff voice, Albert Square swag and a rep for being the hardest man in Walford seems to float Patsy Kensit's boat as she reflects on her time at EastEnders.The star admits that, like others on set, she found herself a bit giddy around Steve McFadden, who plays Phil Mitchell. “I swooned over him,” she tells us.

Patsy has been a household name for so long that it’s hard to imagine her feeling starstruck. But when we caught up with the gorgeous 55 year old actress at a women's lifestyle event - Postcards from Midlife Live - she told us that her latest job on left her feeling totally in awe of her famous co-stars. “He is so lovely.” The star, who played Emma Harding - the estranged mother of the late Lola Pearce - on the BBC soap earlier this year said, “I was so nervous on my first week when Jessie Wallace walked past!” Swooning and admiring aside, it’s clear that working on the soap – which she admits she’s “watched for years” and is a “superfan” of, wasn’t easy and Patsy admits she has to be on top of her game. “We shot 40 pages a day and you really have to be on the ball," she said. "The writing is so great but I was concerned about the volume of scripts I had to learn.

Luckily I have a photographic memory.” The glowing mum of two looks like a woman in her prime. She’s the first to admit that she’s had her fair share of heartbreak over the years, but the star, who got engaged to the millionaire property tycoon Patric Cassidy, 58 in February, looks like someone who is very much at peace with her life these days.