Lacey Turner feature

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MY MATT'S PERFECT
By Rachel Richardson

EASTENDERS babe Lacey Turner says her ideal romantic leading man is her BOYFRIEND. Lacey, who plays feisty Stacey Slater, reckons barber Matt Kaye can "almost do no wrong". Talking to the News of the World after being nominated for a major Best Actress award, she sighs: "He's practically perfect. I'm really happy. We are very similar?we both like staying in and watching TV and films. He makes me laugh and that is everything I look for in a boyfriend."

The couple, both 18, first got together three years ago. Then Lacey went out with Jake Gotlib?the student she was caught romping with on hotel CCTV. Now Lacey has learned her lesson, settled for a quiet life and has been back with perfect gent Matt for the last year. She explains: "It's difficult to trust people, especially men. You never know what their intentions are." But she reckons she has learned to spot the users. "I have a very good bulls**t radar," she warns. "I can tell very quickly whether someone likes me for me, or for my fame."

Lacey says she's so glad she can put her trust in Matt?even enough to do her hair! "I get him to give me trims and tidy it up," she chirps. "I'm not so sure about letting him do something major though, because if he got it wrong I'd kill him." She says they haven't made any long-term plans?but it's definitely not a case of hair today, gone tomorrow. "We are really happy but we are taking it slow," she declares. "We are still so young?we haven't really thought much about the future. I know that I want to be a mum, but not for many years yet. I'm just getting started with my career so that is way off." The star, who lives with her parents and two sisters in Hertfordshire, reckons she's pretty easygoing but does have her "Stacey moments".

She explains: "I'm not like Stacey at all, but I sometimes forget myself and make a cutting comment like her. I've done it to my mum when she's asked me to tidy my room and I've answered her back. And with Matt I have moments when I want things my way, but generally I'm very laid back."

Apart from when she's pictured in the press looking ropey?like on her 18th birthday when she was pictured in an unflattering pink dress. "It looked like a marshmallow," Lacey recalls with horror. "It was bright and awful, I really don't know what I was thinking. I saw the picture in a magazine?then burnt the dress." Lacey tells how she got good advice on handling fame from Natalie Cassidy, Walford's Sonia Fowler: "She explained that being an actress and being a celebrity are two completely different things. She asked me which one I wanted to be and it didn't take me long to figure it out. Sound advice."

And Lacey has been glad of Natalie's support when handling some of her hard-hitting plotlines, like the harrowing abortion story. Stacey was shown looking terrified at the clinic next to the grisly medical equipment. Lacey reveals she was only half acting?she was genuinely shaken. She says: "It was scary to see the hospital bed, the stirrups and doctors' equipment. I could really empathise with the fear that a young girl would feel. I got loads of letters from girls who were going through the same as Stacey. Many were very touched. I enjoyed acting out those scenes as I knew it was something girls my age go through."

It was thanks to performances like this that viewers voted her on to the shortlist for the National Television Awards Best Actress gong. She is up against last year's winner Dr Who star Billie Piper, Lost's Evangeline Lily, Corrie's Sue Cleaver and Emmerdale's Ursula Holden-Gill.

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[eefanincan]

Good read. Thanks.

[Twirley]

I like Stacey/Lacey. She does a good job with her character on EE. I worry that she's settling down a bit too early though, after all...she's only 18. I was always out at that age. Maybe it had something to do with never wanting to be at home.

[janbo1960]

Shes got a good mouth on her.... like old Mo..... two of my fave characters!!!

[Twirley]

Where is Big Mo? Haven't seen her around for a while.

[Skylace]

Thanks for this. She is really one of my favorites on the show.

[Skylace]

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it must have a taken a REAL man to knock her down.

[tec]

What a week she's had. First, an overdose at the club for Stacey now a reality check for Lacey. She's had a very tough week all round.

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Lacey Turner: Men burp in my ear and ask how much I earn

Pretty Lacey Turner admits she's far from being a man magnet. 'I think a lot of men find me intimidating and unapproachable. Either that or they think I'm ugly!' she says. 'I never really get chatted up.'

The EastEnders actress says being a soap star means she ends up surrounded by tipsy gawkers rather than genuine nice guys. 'In the first 30 seconds of meeting someone, you know what they're there for,' she tells Celebs On Sunday. 'I analyse everything they say and do – it's hard to trust people. They'll say, “How much do you earn?” And I just think, “Right, you can go”. 'The ones you want to talk to you don't come over – but you always get the drunk ones who are quite happy to burp in your ear.'

Lacey, 19, has been single for nine months and is fine with that. 'It's great. I don't have to answer to anyone,' she explains. 'I can just do what I like.'

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[pirtybirdy]

What happened to perfect Matt? LOL!

[Skylace]

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[Skylace]

Just read this face and was getting ready to post. You beat me to the punch! Not surprised really and actually glad. I think there is little left to do with her at the moment with Bradley gone.

[eefanincan]

I'm not surprised either, since Bradley's gone there's not much really for her to do. Glad they're leaving the door open for her to possibly return down the road.