Biography

Born as Denise Van Outen in Basildon, Essex, both her parents are retired. Denise is the youngest of three siblings; her sister is a mother and house wife and her brother is a suit tailor.

At the age of seven she began modelling for knitting patterns, and showed an early flair for performing. This resulted in her attending the Sylvia Young Theatre School. As a student, she played Eponine in Les Misérables alongside fellow Sylvia Young student Melanie Blatt, – the role paid her school fees; the Anthony Newley directed production of Stop the World – I Want to Get Off, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream with the Royal Shakespeare Company.


As a teenager she had brief roles on a number of television dramas including Kappatoo, She also sang in a girl group, Those 2 Girls who released two singles Wanna Make You Go…Uh! and All I Want, by which time she had become Denise van Outen. She also did backing vocals with Melanie Blatt for the band Dreadzone.

Van Outen has retained her distinct looks gracing the covers of popular men’s and women’s titles and being voted both Rear of the Year in 1999, and top of a poll to find the most desired “bikini body” in a 2007 poll of readers of Grazia magazine.

During 1995, van Outen started her television career on Saturday morning ITV show Scratchy and Co’s mini youth programme Massive! Van Outen joined The Big Breakfast on Channel 4 as a weather and travel reporter in 1996 and landed the main co-presenting role in 1997. It proved to be her big breakthrough, with her cheeky “Essex Girl” personality and sexy clothing playing off well against the quick wit of Johnny Vaughan, and together they recovered audience figures to respectable levels.

She took a break from presenting the show towards the end of 1998 but returned in 2000 for a further year-long stint in an attempt to boost the ratings, which had tailed off following her departure. When the show closed down, van Outen gave Vaughan a present of a set of AMG wheels for his Mercedes Benz CLK – commented on as “very Essex Girl” by Jeremy Clarkson when the pair appeared on the BBC’s Top Gear programme.

Van Outen then returned to television, reviving her on screen relationship with Johnny Vaughan in 2004 for one series of the BBC’s Saturday night family revival show “Passport to Paradise,” She continued in 2005 co-presenting ITV’s This Morning with Richard Bacon.

Van Outen was asked to be a panelist How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria? in 2006 for the BBC, a programme searching for a girl to play the role of Maria in The Sound of Music, but was unable to accept the offer due to commitments in the USA co-hostingNBC’s Grease: You’re the One that I Want!

After her commitments ended on the show she began re-establishing her television career in the UK. In November 2006, she hosted Sky1’s The Race – set at Silverstone Circuit – in which a celebrity Girls Team headed by David Coulthard raced against a celebrity Boys Team headed by Eddie Irvine. In December 2006, she hosted the National Lottery Christmas special, and in January 2007 hosted one show of The Friday Night Project. She also guested on The Charlotte Church Show, and was one of the judges at the Miss World pageant in Warsaw, Poland.

In 2007, she joined the panel for BBC One’s follow up to How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?, Any Dream Will Do! which was casting Joseph in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. After viewers on 9 June 2007 voted Lee Mead as the winner of Any Dream Will Do! – to play the role of Joseph in a revival at London’s Adelphi Theatre of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat van Outen said: “From the very beginning right through to the very end, Lee has been the most consistent out of all the contestants. He has the ability to make even really popular songs his own and he has his own unique style of performing. The next time he lands a role as a leading man, can he put me forward to be the leading lady?”

In July 2007, she appeared in a commercial advertising the rebranding of Morrisons supermarket, with a backing track from revived boy band Take That.

In 2008 Denise presented ‘Backstage at the Brit’s’ for ITV1 and contiuned with a new Saturday night entertainment series for ITV1, alongside Ben Shephard, called Who Dares Sings. Challenging 100 members of the studio audience to hit the right notes in the largest karaoke competition on TV. Her on screen presence continued with For One Night Only alongside Michael Buble and Hairspray: The School Musical for Sky One. The programme saw Denise mentor a group of regular school kids to put on their own version of Hairspray on the West End Stage.

During her first stint on the Big Breakfast show, she appeared as Jill ITV1’s version of the pantomime Jack and the Beanstalk. alongside Julie Walters and Neil Morrisey. However, she wanted to further develop her acting career, so she left The Big Breakfast at the end of 1998. In 1999 she appeared on several episodes of The Bill and The Young Person’s Guide To Becoming A Rockstar, the BBC’s Murder in Mind short series of crime dramas, and on 2 series of Babes in the Wood with Karl Howman and Samantha Janus.

Van Outen has also appeared in film, initially as Maureen in the crime comedy Love, Honour and Obey. She also had a cameo tease as red head Alex, in the low-key Tube Tales in one of the four separate short films, based on the London Underground. Other directors included Ewan McGregor, Jude Law and Jarvis Cocker; while her part in “Horny” was directed by Lost In Space director Stephen Hopkins. Most recently, Van Outen has played a small role in the Romantic Comedy Are You Ready For Love?

She first played Roxie Hart on the stage in the hit musical Chicago at the Adelphi Theatre in the West End in April 2001. Her run proved a hit with theatre-goers, selling out for the entire 20 weeks. Unknown in the United States, she reprised her role on Broadway in the spring of 2002, before returning to the show’s London version in late April 2002. Late the same year, Van Outen appeared as one of many special guest stars in a performance of The Play What I Wrote once again in London’s West End.

In 2003, she returned to the London stage at the Gielgud Theatre in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s one-woman show Tell Me On A Sunday, which he reworked for her. She was a huge success and the show ran for nearly a year. She then joined the cast of the established ITV sentimental drama Where the Heart Is as one of the lead characters, playing single mother Kim Blakeney, continuing for two series.

Van Outen played Maureen in the 2007 London revival of Rent Remixed directed by William Baker until December 22. She was forced to cancel some performances due to a throat infection.

It was announced on January 10, 2008 that van Outen would be reunited with Johnny Vaughan and become the co-host of the Capital Radio breakfast show, from February 4, 2008.

However, on July 29, 2008 she decided to quit the show half way through her contract due to juggling her extensive TV commitments with the early mornings

In 2009 Denise climbed Mt Kilimunjaro for Comic Relief. Joining her on the climb were Girls Aloud members Cheryl Cole and Kimberley Walsh, Fearne Cotton, Ben Shephard, Gary Barlow, Ronan Keating, Alesha Dixon and Chris Moyles.