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But then she wondered if she could do it and ultimately took a gamble on herself. She added, “So without telling anybody so nobody would laugh at me, I applied to Guildford\u2026 and that\u2019s how it all started.”<\/p>\n
Later, Alison agreed that joining clubs – be it amateur dramatics societies, like Brenda joined, or something like a choir – is how one finds friends and develops their skills. To which Brenda replied, wisely, “You can be really good at something you\u2019ve not even tried yet.”<\/p>\n
Inspirational words, and as we look towards the end of 2025, could the new year be the time to take the leap and try something new?<\/p>\n\n\n
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(Image credit: Sally Anderson\/Alamy Live News)<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
It certainly worked out for Brenda, who starred as the titular character in the long-running series, Vera, <\/em>which ran for 14 years.<\/p>\nAlso, during her interview with Alison and Dermot, Brenda touched on the rumours of a potential Vera <\/em>comeback. Keeping it open, she shared, “If they were doing a special… certainly, yes, I’d leap at it. That’s unlikely to happen, I’m too busy!”<\/p>\nIn addition to her work on the crime series, Brenda became a two-time Oscar nominee for her performances in 1996\u2019s Secrets & Lies <\/em>and 1998\u2019s Little Voice, <\/em>nominated for two Emmys, and has won a BAFTA and a Golden Globe.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.womanandhome.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brenda Blethyn has been a firm favourite on our screens since her early roles dating back to 1980. Four decades later, and she\u2019s still a fixture – thanks in part to her role in the crime series Vera, which ran for 14 years. Brenda has always done things her own way – not least including […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2216320,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2216319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/The-surprising-way-Brenda-Blethyns-acting-career-began-scaled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2216319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2216319"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2216319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2216321,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2216319\/revisions\/2216321"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2216320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2216319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2216319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2216319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}