James Bond legend Sean Connery presented her with a Trailblazer award, Michael Fassbender gushed over her 'honest' acting and movie buffs garlanded her with film gongs for her role as an angry teen living in an Essex estate, in the 2009 film Fish Tank.
But now EastEnders actress Katie Jarvis' fall from grace has been cemented after she was ordered to carry out 200 hours of unpaid work for a racist and prolonged tirade she launched after getting in an argument with four women in July 2020.
It was sparked when Jarvis tried to take a chair one of their group was going to use, outside a fish and chip shop.
Jarvis said "black lives don't matter anyway", and called the women "black c***s", later bragging about being in EastEnders and spewing more racist abuse as she walked along the Southend seafront, in Essex, Cyrus Shroff for the prosecution told Basildon Crown Court at Jarvis' sentencing hearing on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, the 30-year-old mum-of-two pleaded guilty to racially aggravated harassment and common assault, having changed her plea, on the day her trial was due to begin.
The actress had also been charged with two counts of assault by beating, which she denied.
The judge instructed that one of these counts lie on the file, with a not guilty verdict recorded in respect of the second.
Following this shameful chapter in Jarvis' life, we have taken a look at her journey from film darling to standing in the dock.
Jarvis' rise to fame was not a conventional one.
She left school shortly after turning 16 and was unemployed when a casting agent for director Andrea Arnold spotted her rowing with her on-off boyfriend at Tilbury station in Essex.
The casting agent followed her after Katie got off a train, and told her Andrea was looking for a lead in her coming of age film, Fish Tank.
Jarvis didn’t believe her at first, she told The Guardian, but later dialled the number on the card the agent had given her, and three auditions later, she had won the role that would transform her life.
Jarvis, the eldest of three sisters, played Mia, an unhappy and prickly 15-year-old who gets in fights and steals, but feels at peace when she dances alone and cares for a horse in a nearby field.
Michael Fassbender played Mia’s young mum’s boyfriend, who she is fascinated by and attracted to.
Jarvis was heaped with praise for her raw performance. Connery presented her with the Trailblazer award at the Edinburgh Film Festival, where she turned 18, and also won Best Performance in a British Feature Film.
She was nominated for Best Actress at the European Film Awards, with saw her compete against Penelope Cruz and Kate Winslet, and won the Pinewood Studios Best Performance Award at the Woman in Film and TV Awards.
“Katie just has a real truth and honesty and reality in her that she brought every day on set,” X-Men star Fassbender said of her.
The film itself won the Jury Prize at the glitzy Cannes Film Festival.
Just days after the film premiered at Cannes, Katie gave birth to her first daughter Lillie-May, aged just 17.
She spoke of her determination to keep acting and she signed to an agent, going on to appear in a 10 minute silent film which aired on Sky as part of a collection.
Despite the early promise, Katie failed to set the acting world alight, appearing in a handful of films and TV shows, before she was cast as Hayley Slater in EastEnders, first appearing in February 2018.
Hayley was at the centre of an explosive storyline which saw her get pregnant with Alfie Moon’s baby after having an affair in Spain.
Their betrayal was discovered by Kat Slater during a shocking Christmas special.
Jarvis was praised for portrayal of loud-mouth and chaotic Hayley, and was nominated for Best Soap Newcomer at the 2018 Digital Spy Reader Awards.
However, she only stayed on the BBC soap for a year and was next in the headlines in October 2019, when it was revealed she was working as a security guard at a B&M store.
Defending her new job, Jarvis said she found work “as soon as I could” to earn cash for her two kids.
"It's the nature of being an actor; gigs come and go, and after my contract with EastEnders ended in February, I found a new job as soon as I could,” she explained.
Other celebs such as Tamzin Outwaite then spoke out in support of Jarvis, which she explained to Grazia magazine: “gave me the strength to speak out and stand up for hard-working people - especially single mums.
She added: “As long as I'm providing for them, nothing else matters. Everything I do is for them."
Speaking in court today, Patrick Harte, Jarvis' barrister said the scenes in Southend and the court case had caused the actress huge "hardship", adding the last film she shot was in 2020.
He did add however she "may be starring in another film next year."
Speaking outside the court after her sentencing, Jarvis said she took "full responsibility for the sickening way I behaved" and denied being racist.
Prosecutor Mr Shroff described how a fight broke out between Jarvis and the four women, after she repeated ‘black lives don’t matter’ and ‘black c***s’, to the group.
During the hearing, Patrick Harte, her barrister, said Ms Jarvis maintained she did not use "use any racist slur", until after the incident "turned physical".
Judge Samantha Leigh, sentencing, noted Jarvis had no previous convictions as an adult and said that as she was in the “public eye you have been subjected to abuse on social media”.
She sentenced the former soap star to a two-year community order, with 200 hours of unpaid work and a requirement to complete 60 days of specified activities.
Jarvis tearfully told the judge “thank you” after she had been sentenced.
The actress had also been charged with two counts of assault by beating, which she denied.
The judge instructed one of these counts lie on the file, with a not guilty verdict recorded in respect of the second.
