The couple plan to marry
next year. The
romantic Lake District is where their
relationship first
bloomed, so celebrating
their engagement there was the perfect
choice.
When Lee proposed, he
scattered
50 beautiful, metre-long red roses on
the bed and floor of a
hotel suite in
Manchester
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CORONATION STREET'S LEE BOARDMAN AND JENNIFER JAMES
celebrate their engagement
in
the Lake District where
their romance first began
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The menacing star of Coronation
Street villain Jez Quigley, played by actor Lee Boardman, is enough to send
a chill right through you. But for actress Jennifer James his gaze sends a
tingle down her spine. For Jennifer and Lee, who first me on the set of the
programme earlier this year, have recently become engaged after a whirlwind
romance heady enough to rival any soap storyline.
Manchester-born Lee,
28, has a solid background in classical theatre, but has also played TV
villains in Band of Gold and Grafters. Face to face he is a
gentle, easy-humoured guy, but admits that as a teenager he was very much the
angry young man - and that volatile layer is something he draws on to play
merchant of menace Jez. |
Lee and Jennifer toast their engagement at a
hotel in Windermere
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Jennifer, 22, comes from Wigan, where
she was a high-achieving head girl at her school and after college attended the
Rose Bruford College drama school in London. Soon after graduating she was
spotted by Coronation Street producers while appearing in a play and
immediately secured the part of sweet barmaid Geena Gregory.
Now, for
Jennifer and Lee, returning to the romantic backdrop of the Lake District is
significant because this is where their relationship first became a reality. "A
group of us from work started going to the Lake District at weekends," says
Jennifer. The third time we went, I got food poisoning from a sandwich I'd
eaten in a cafe. I was violently ill and Lee took care of me. That's how we
started going out."
The actor proposed to Jennifer just two weeks
after their relationship became more than just platonic. "He said jokingly,
'Shall we get married then?' and I said 'All right then,' and laughed it off,"
recalls Jennifer. "From then on he asked me every day and it got more and more
serious until I answered, 'Yes.'" |
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