Dancing On Ice star’s Vanessa Bauer reveals huge career switch after secretly spending eight years training --[Reported by Umva mag]

SHE’S Dancing On Ice’s queen of the rink with a win and five runner-up finishes to her name.

But behind the scenes professional skater Vanessa Bauer, 28, has quietly been studying away on a different passion.

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For eight years, the German-born star has been honing her acting talents and soon fans will get to see the fruits of her labour on the small screen.

In an exclusive interview with The Sun, ahead of a 60km trek in Slovenia in memory of her late dad for the charity Grief Encounter, Vanessa remained coy on whether she will or won’t in the next series of Dancing On Ice.

She said: “There are so many things coming up. So let’s see.

“You will actually see me act soon enough as well, which I’m very excited about. I’ve been doing acting training for as long as I could think, and everything is now coming together.

“So yeah, there’s a few projects in the works that have nothing to do with ice skating, and it’s very exciting.

“My dream. I want to be inspired. It sounds so cheesy, but honestly, I think with acting it’s amazing how you can jump into any different role and any different character, and just empathise with their lives and their struggles.

“So eventually, I do want to work up to a standard where I can take on very difficult and inspiring characters that will hopefully help a generation as well.”

One such film she cited is the acclaimed 2019 picture She Said, based on the book of the same name.

The film stars Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan in the lead roles and tells the story of the New York Times investigation that helped expose disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein‘s years-long web of sexual abuse and misconduct.

“I’ve been wanting to act since I was four years old,” said Vanessa. “Since I started ice skating I always thought it was amazing that on the ice you can tell stories and that you can be a different character, and obviously there’s a whole different story to translating that into screen acting.

“When I was at school, I was always in theatre. I always did theatre plays. Acting training I’ve done continuously for four years, but I started when I did Dancing on Ice as well. So eight years ago.

“It’s a very exciting chapter that I’m getting into and I’ve definitely prepared for it for a very long time because people underestimate the work that goes into making career changes behind the scenes as well. I’ve always been very ambitious and very hardworking so I’ve been working for a very long time for this.”

This week Vanessa is taking a break from all career commitments to pursue something very personal to her.

Today she took her first steps on a tough trek in Eastern Europe with a group raising awareness and money for Grief Encounter, a charity that helps children and young people navigate loss.

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FAMILY HEARTACHE

Vanessa’s dad died from cancer in 2001 after living with the illness for six years.

Since then, she has bravely opened up about her own ongoing grief and is now an ambassador for the charity.

“I feel that my grief journey has definitely been a roller coaster, I know it sounds so cliché, but it’s just the truth,” she said.

“There’s really no guidebook, I think, that will generalise grief for each and every single person. So I believe that I’m in a very good place. I always have been and every time I do feel down, I know that it is also just a phase and so I do believe that I’ve been going through it quite mentally strong.

“People generally say it takes about seven years to fully process grief. I think because I’ve been really proactive about it and I’ve been slowly, sadly, anticipating my dad’s passing, I was quite prepared, not as suddenly to lose him, but I was prepared to lose him eventually. So I think, yeah, I’ve had my own strategies and it’s been working.”

Vanessa’s dad’s death came just two weeks before she was to skate on Dancing On Ice.

Rather than pull out of the competition, it became a healthy distraction and give her purpose in those difficult early months.

She said: “I literally jumped straight into the show.

“I met my celebrity partner, and everything went rolling. And yes, it was hard at the beginning, of course, but grief doesn’t necessarily hit immediately. I think it’s an initial state of trauma of shock that you go through and then, for me, it only really kicked in probably a year after, here I really felt it, where I had time to breathe and where I had time to really process this loss.”

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BRAVE DECISION

Viewers watched Vanessa confront the loss while filming The Real Full Monty on ITV last year, something she credits with really helping her.

Initially, Vanessa admitted to having lots of reservations about taking her clothes of on television, but the nature of the show and the sensitive way it tells the stories of celebrities affected by cancer made it a memorable experience.

She said: “I have actually so much love for the show, because as much as it is great to raise awareness and to also help other people, has really helped me as well, having to speak about it openly and publicly when I didn’t quite feel ready for it.

“But now I just think it was the best thing that I could have done for my own personal grief journey to speak out.”

Vanessa has a personal target of £2,000 for her Slovenia trek, while as a collective the group is aiming to raise £10,000.

She said: “The more we raise, the more children are going to be having a bigger chance of healing a lot faster from their traumatic loss of their loved ones.”

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