Casualty star Chelsea Halfpenny gets engaged to childhood crush
‘Casualty’ star Chelsea Halfpenny is engaged to her childhood crush.
The 30-year-old actress - who played Alicia Munroe in the BBC drama and Amy Wyatt in ITV soap 'Emmerdale' - and fellow actor James Baxter, 31, first met at a drama workshop as teenagers 16 years ago, and Chelsea fell head-over-heels in love with him, but he had "no interest" in her.
James also appeared in 'Emmerdale' as Jake Doland, but Chelsea had left at this point, and they didn't meet again as adults until 2018 when they attended the National Television Awards, and six months later, the pair started dating.
Last summer, they took their romance to the next level, but they've had to delay their wedding plans due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Chelsea said of their love story: “If you’d told those two teenagers then that they’d be getting married 16 years later they’d have thought it was mad!
"I really fancied him and he did not fancy me at all! He’s a year older and I thought he was really cool, but I also remember thinking – ‘Well, no wonder he’s not interested, because he’s just so much older than me!’
“We never kept in touch because he had no interest in me at all.
“I just really remembered him because I liked him so much.”
She continued: “When I joined 'Emmerdale', a few people would speak about James, because he’d only left a year before.
“I knew exactly who they meant because I remembered this gorgeous boy with the spiky hair that I fancied so much.
“Eventually we started to follow each other on Twitter ... but still our paths never crossed.”
The 'Waitress' star - who is the niece of former soap star Jill Halfpenny - revealed how it ended up with James "chasing" after her and she confessed all about her crush to him.
She told The Daily Mirror newspaper: “We bumped into each other. .. the stars just sort of aligned.
“It was another six months before we got together and this time it was the other way round – he was chasing me!
“It was soon after we got together that I told him I’d fancied him as a kid. I don’t think he believed me to start with!”
