Samantha Zoe Womack

Samantha Zoe Womack (née Janus; born 2 November 1972) is an English actress, singer and director, both on television and stage.

In recent years she has been best known for playing the role of Ronnie Branning in EastEnders, but made her name in the mid 1990s as Mandy Wilkins in Game On, and also represented the United Kingdom in the Eurovision Song Contest 1991. She is currently the star of the award winning show South Pacific, touring the UK with the cast and gaining the most impressive reviews of her career so far. Samantha is patron to Expressions Performing Arts in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire.

Janus was born in Brighton, Sussex. Her singer-songwriter father Noel left the family when she was six, and soon after her model-actress mother Diane married a doctor and the family moved to Edinburgh. Janus lived on the QE2 with her grandmother for a short time. On 23 August 2009, her 60-year-old estranged father was found hanged in the bathroom of his council flat in Brighton, where he lived alone.He committed suicide.

Aged fifteen she left home as a self-confessed wild child for a life in squats, drinking, smoking and taking drugs. She eventually turned her life around, and attended the Sylvia Young Theatre School in London.

Womack is the niece of Angie Best, a former wife of footballer George Best. Her cousin is Calum Best, son of Angie and George.

Janus married Italian Junfan Mantovani in 1997 after a long relationship. The relationship broke down and the couple divorced in 1998.

She then starred in Liverpool 1, and started a relationship with Mark Womack while she was still married to Mantovani. She and Womack married on 16 May 2009[18] and have two children (both born in Westminster, London): son Benjamin Thomas Womack (born February 2001) (after having him Janus took two years off to enjoy motherhood) and their daughter Lily-Rose Womack (born 17 March 2005), while Mark has another son from a previous marriage, Michael Womack. Womack has stated that she would like more children but her husband is not so keen.

In 2009, Janus took her husband's surname of Womack and began to use it professionally in her role on EastEnders.