BBC Strictly Come Dancing's Shayne Ward's famous fiancée and sinister part catapulted her to fame

Strictly Come Dancing's Shayne Ward has been supported throughout his journey on the BBC talent show by his partner who is famous in her own right thanks to a dark role in a hit soap

Strictly Shayne Ward’s fiancée made a name for herself playing a feisty leading lady in a role that took a very dark turn and solved a huge murderous mystery.

Shayne Ward has been battling to keep his place in the Strictly Come Dancing line up. Partnered with Nancy Xu, the actor and singer has found himself in the bottom two a couple of times, despite his prowess in the ballroom and has also been on the receiving end of criticism from fans of the BBC show. One person who has always had his back though is his real life partner and fiancée Sophie Austin. She’s been spotted in tears in the audience, overcome with pride at her other half’s achievements and Shayne, 39, has himself previously revealed that it was Sophie, 40, who pushed him to sign up for Strictly.

"It was actually Sophie who put me forward for the show," he said. "For many years she's talked about Strictly, she loves, loves the show, so every year the music would come on and she'd whisper: 'You'd be good at this.' She always had that belief in me, she'd say: 'I just think you'd really enjoy it, and I want people to see you.' This year she said to me: 'Can I please put your name forward?' and I said: 'Yeah' because it felt like the right time. So she did, and now I'm so happy I said yes because it's one of the best things I've ever done."

The couple share two children together, daughter Willow, eight and Reign, two and have been engaged since 2017. They met in 2015 while Shayne was starring in Coronation Street as Aiden Connor and Sophie was playing Lindsey Butterfield in Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks. She first briefly appeared in the hit show in 2012 as Sapphire before landing the regular role of Lindsey the year after which catapulted her to fame thanks to the huge storyline her character was embroiled in. Lindsey was billed as a "strong leading lady with a big heart and a strong moral code" and was engaged to the eldest Roscoe son, Joe.

Feisty Lindsey was also a junior doctor and the character was involved in dramatic plotlines which included an attempted rape, a miscarriage and an on-going affair with her brother-in-law. The storyline of the Gloved Hand Killer gripped fans of the soap from January 2015 when a mystery serial killer claimed the lives of seven characters.

The murderer was injecting victims, who had all done something morally wrong, with potassium chloride and there were six suspects. In October 2015 the identity of the killer was revealed to be Sophie’s character Lindsey, who was eventually herself murdered by strangulation in 2016 when the actress decided to leave the show.

Shortly after this Sophie and Shayne discovered they were expecting their first child together and she told Brood magazine about her worries over how her pregnancy would affect her career: "I fell pregnant as I was leaving Hollyoaks. I’d decided to leave Hollyoaks because I wanted to do loads of other things and then I found out that I was pregnant! It sounds awful but at the time I thought well that’s it, I’m not going to be able to progress from here for a while."

Despite her fears her agent got her two jobs early on in her pregnancy and she and she went on to star in ITV’s Tina and Bobby, Call The Midwife and Casualty. With Shayne away working a lot on shows such as Channel 5’s The Good Ship Murder, Sophie has stayed at home with their young family so there’s always one of them there but she hopes to land more roles "in the future".

The couple also want to finally get married too. They had to postpone their nuptials due to the Covid pandemic but had decided on finally tying the knot at the end of this year. However, when the offer of Strictly came up, they abandoned the plans once again. Shayne recently revealed exclusively to the Mirror when the couple are planning to walk down the aisle and how excited they are that their children will be a part of the special day too.

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