After a tough few years out of the spotlight Paul Nicholls is getting ready to make his acting comeback.
The 43-year-old from Bolton – whose real name is Gerard Paul Greenhalgh - is set to star in a new drama called Phoenix Rise.
Airing exclusively on BBC iPlayer next year, it follows six teenage misfits from the West Midlands who prove that being an outsider means belonging to the best club of all.
Paul will play lorry driver Carl, dad to Billy, 15, and 11-year-old Rihanna, who are used to him not being around.
But life offscreen hasn’t been always rosy for Paul, who shot to fame as Nineties heart-throb Joe Wicks on EastEnders.
Here’s everything we know about what he’s been up to since leaving the BBC soap, from drug addiction to cancer scares and a near-death waterfall accident in Thailand.
EastEnders fame
Paul made his TV debut at the age of 10 on Children’s Ward followed by appearances on kids’ shows The Biz and Earthfasts.
But it was his breakout role in EastEnders as schizophrenic Joe Wicks, which he landed in 1996, that catapulted him to fame.
At the time Paul was just 16 and he became the teenage pin up of his era. He was twice voted TV’s sexiest actor and went on to grace the covers of Just Seventeen, Sugar, Smash Hits and Heat magazines.
He was also rumoured to have had flings with two of EastEnders’ leading actresses, Martine McCutcheon and Daniella Westbrook.
But the pressures of fame got to him and Paul’s partying spiralled out of control leading him to quit the soap in 1997.
Drug addiction
An addiction to cocaine followed and Paul has since revealed he remembers little about his time in EastEnders despite working on the show for almost two years.
He said: “I can’t really remember it. It’s really weird. I remember driving to work and being on set a few times. But if I ever look back now, it’s just blank. I just can’t really remember being in it.”
After leaving the soap, he recalls the attention surrounding him dying down within a couple of years – but he was still boozing and taking class A drugs a lot.
In 2008 he had went public with his addiction issues telling the Daily Mail: “People said I had too much too soon when I was playing Joe Wicks – and maybe they were right. I didn’t want to be a heart-throb and I could not handle the attention.”
Making the decision to go teetotal, Paul said: “I was well on my way to a total breakdown. The life I was living would have destroyed me and my career so I made myself stop.
“I discovered I can’t just have a couple of drinks and then stop. It’s not in my make up.”
Divorce from model wife
Despite his struggles Paul still landed acting roles after leaving EastEnders in BBC drama City Central.
He also starred in Law and Order: UK, The Secret Diary Of A Call Girl, Grantchester, Death in Paradise and the first two series of Ackley Bridge.
But perhaps his most notable role was in 2004 as bad boy drug smuggler Jed in Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason.
He even found time for love and married Scottish model Chantal Brown, who was signed to Kate Moss’ agency, in 2005 after three years of dating.
At the time Paul called Chantal his “soulmate” but the couple, who didn’t have children, split in 2015.
Chantal has since moved on with Strictly Come Dancing star Matt Goss who she has been dating since earlier this year.
After splitting with his wife, Paul found love with former dancer Hemma Kathrecha and moved in with her and her two-year-old son.
However, he has recently declined to say whether they are still together.
Cancer scare
In 2016, Paul suffered a terrifying cancer scare after losing his voice for several months.
Sharing what happened on ITV ’s Loose Women, he revealed doctors found a tumour in his throat, which luckily turned out to be benign.
“I didn’t speak for a couple of months. It was a tumour rather than a module in my vocal cords,” he said.
And it seemed the stress got to Paul as in 2017 he was pictured on the front of The Sun smoking a crack pipe in a friend’s flat as he suffered a relapse.
“He’s fallen off the wagon and seems in a bad way,” a source told the newspaper at the time.
Near-death experience in Thailand
As if things couldn’t get any worse, Paul then suffered a near-death experience while on holiday in Thailand in 2017.
The actor was lucky to be alive after spending three days trapped at the bottom of a waterfall after falling down it running away from a pack of wild dogs in Koh Samui.
With two broken legs and a smashed phone meaning he was unable to call for help, he was eventually saved after the motorbike hire company he used raised the alarm.
When help came he was found to have 37 different infections including malaria, cholera and dengue fever and had to spend six months alone in hospital.
Paralysing stroke
It was these infections, which Paul later discovered had remained in his blood, that led to him having a stroke.
He was rehearsing for a theatre production of Rain Man in the UK when he collapsed and woke up in hospital 16 hours later after somehow managing to call himself an ambulance.
“The right side of my body was paralysed. I knew it was a stroke,” he told The Sun at the time.
Paul later sunk into a deep depression after being told he needed an entire year of physio to get the right side of body moving again.
“I did my physio. I went through the motions of life but I was in bed most of the time. The whole of 2019 was basically a write-off,” he said.
Drug relapse
Then in 2020 Paul said he pressed the “f it button” and relapsed into drug addiction – which was the worst he had ever been.
“The rabbit hole I went down led to places that I never thought I’d end up in – flats with people I didn’t know,” he told The Sun. “At certain points I’d be gone for three or four days and not sleep at all. I stopped caring.
“The last time I ended up in a flat with people smoking stuff, doing this and that. They recognised me. I looked around and thought ‘If I don’t stop, I’ll die.’”
This prompted Paul to kick the drugs once more and he has been managed to stay clean since joining Narcotics Anonymous and going to regular meetings.
He says he still has the fear he could relapse again, but his goal was to get to a year clean and work again, which he has now done.
The actor joins the cast of new BBC iPlayer drama Phoenix Rise next year.
*Frank offers confidential advice about drugs and addiction (email frank@talktofrank.com, message 82111 or call 0300 123 6600) or the NHS has information about getting help.
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