EastEnders legend Ross Kemp has confessed he’s “unemployed” as he asked “push any work my way” in a new interview. The Grant Mitchell star appeared in the soap from 1990 until 1999, returning in 2005 until 2006. Since then he’s made a couple of cameos, with his last coming in 2016, and turned his hand to documentary making for projects like Ross Kemp on Gangs and Ross Kemp in
Afghanistan. Now, however, he’s confessed he’s no longer employed and teased an return. Chatting to The Sun’s TV Magazine, he admitted: “I had gone back and I went back specifically for Barbara's [Windsor's] leaving storyline because she asked me, and she was a very dear friend of mine. "But, you know, I owe EastEnders, a lot. And I'm not one of those people that would ever try to forget that, not that I would probably ever be able to.” The star admitted he “wouldn’t want to” forget his experiences on the platform that “helped me travel the world” filming documentaries. Quizzed whether he’d ever return to Walford, Ross said: “I would never, ever say no to that. Why would I?” He said it would “look unkind” if he refused and likened it to “cutting your nose off to spite your face”. Ross said: “I owe it so much.” The star says he’s “lucky” to have filmed so many different projects, including a Channel 5 drama and a
BBC game show. And when he’s trolled about “not being a real actor”, he simply admitted: “I’m certainly not a
Hollywood A-lister. “I’m now unemployed though, so if you’ve got any work, could you push it my way?” he quipped. Thankfully it seems Ross was simply kidding around, since he’s already returned to host the BBC’s Celebrity Bridge of Lies this year. Ross boasts a net worth of around £1million, and has even boosted his bank balance by releasing fiction books including his novel Moving Target. When BBC salaries were leaked in 2006, Ross’ was listed as £380,000 a year – but he had a secret way of earning more money. He explained on that while he didn’t “creep into other actor’s shots”, he would work out how to appear in more episodes. He explained: “f you were doing three days in the Vic, which you normally would do, I would normally be standing back and I’d work out that I was not in the middle episode that they were
shooting that day, and obviously cameras – like the one that’s pointing at me now – have a red light on top of it when it’s recording.” He went on: “So I got on very well with the camera guys and I’d say, ‘Is this episode 235? Not 234, or 233?’ and they’d go, ‘Yes’. It would be ‘I’m not in that one, well, I am now’.” He’d then insert himself into the narrative in improvised moments, as the cast were paid per episode.