EastEnders' Charlie Brooks on why she’ll never be rid of imposter syndrome

Despite a career spanning 23 years that has been littered with awards and commendations, Charlie Brooks still suffers from imposter syndrome.

Speaking on White Wine Question Time, the actor said her self-doubt stems from not having attending drama school like many of her peers did.

“I never went to drama school either and that's an insecurity I suppose I've carried around with me and that I'm slowly sort of dismissing as I get older,” she told podcast host Kate Thornton.

She added: “There’s quite a lot of snobbery that can be within the industry, and so I've sort of had feelings of not being good enough and not knowing enough.”

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It has been rumoured Brooks has been asked to reprise her role of soap villain Janine Butcher in EastEnders, and she’s kept herself busy during lockdown launching education website iampro with her brother.

The site aims to provide affordable drama and arts training to those people who wouldn’t normally be able to access it.

Brooks said she wanted the site to help to "fix" the problem of inaccessibility of acting lessons but said it is also helping to diminish her insecurities.

“Selfishly, this is a platform that actually teaches me everything that I feel like I missed out on with regards to Meisner, Stanislavski or voice work,” she said.

The star said that since the age of eight, she’s known that acting was her calling, which led her to making a dramatic change in her life as a teenager.

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She said: “Even at that young age of like 11,12,13 that as beautiful as my hometown is - and as much as I love it - I was really desperate to get out because I knew it just didn't offer me enough.

“It was necessary for me to convince my parents to let me go. I was so lucky, because they were so supportive, and I actually moved out of home when I was 13 and moved to London on my own and boarded with a family in London.”

She sees her new website as a way of giving back that support – and also enabling those not as lucky as she was as a way to access the arts.

“That level of support from my family, it's just amazing - and iampro is all about giving that back now and trying to help other young people find their purpose,” she said.

She added: “None of us really had a clue what we were doing with this. We just knew we had a great idea, and we did everything we can to make that happen with regard to surrounding ourselves with the right people and helping us take it to the next step.”

Despite pushing herself out of her comfort zone, Brooks says she will always struggle with feeling like a bit of a fraud when it comes to acting.

“I don't know if the imposter syndrome will ever go - that s**t is real,” she said.

Hear Charlie Brooks talk about how her acting career contributed to the marriage break-up of her parents in the latest episode of White Wine Question Time. Listen now on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Watch: Charlie Brooks opens up about her unconventional co-parenting approach with her ex