British soap star Michelle Ryan lands Bionic Woman role
by Martin Conaghan, posted Feb 13th 2007 7:41PM
The Hollywood Reporter has announced that British actress Michelle Ryan has landed the role of Jaime Sommers in NBC's forthcoming remake of the Bionic Woman.22-year-old Ryan shot to fame in the top-rated BBC soap opera Eastenders, playing troubled teenager Zoe Slater, but hasn't made much of an impact in anything else of note, which makes the casting all the more unusual.
However, she's tall and exceptionally beautiful -- in the Jennifer Garner mode -- and if she can shake off the east London accent, she may be able to convince American viewers that she truly is composed of $50million-worth of discarded computer parts.
Her controversial role in Eastenders led to her taking a leave of absence due to exhaustion, but she bounced back to complete a highly-publicized storyline involving murder, and departed the show in 2005.
As The Guardian says: "rape, incest, attempted suicide, prostitution, a fake pregnancy and even attempted murder, makes being rebuilt with bionic ear, legs and right arm sound positively pedestrian."
The original series made a star of Lindsay Wagner when it spun-off from The Six Million Dollar Man, and spawned an entire generation of youngsters running around in lethargic slow-mo movements to the sounds of a dodgy guitar feedback.

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