SHE built her career on being a glamour model and reality star – but these days you’re not likely to see Jess Impiazzi getting her kit off.
The 33-year-old has reinvented herself as a serious actress after making her name posing for lads’ mags and getting caught in the middle of on-screen drama on Towie and Ex On The Beach.
Speaking exclusively to The Sun on Sunday, Jess admitted: “I have no desire to be this crazy reality star who wants to run about being nuts, or a glamour model wanting to prance around naked any more.
“I want to be taken seriously as an actress. One of my all-time favourite actresses is Julia Roberts, and I would love to be like her.”
The glamorous brunette, who is dating former England and Stoke footballer Jermaine Pennant, 39, made her telly debut on hit ITV reality show The Only Way is Essex in 2012 and went on to star in MTV’s Ex On The Beach.
She returned to the MTV show in 2016 for the fifth series but withdrew after three episodes following a string of anxiety attacks.
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Jess said: “I hated being a reality star. In the first series of Ex On The Beach I was only 20. It was such a long time ago, a different lifetime, I have grown up, I am a different person.
“Back then I would get hammered and jump in the swimming pool naked and get intimate with my boyfriend. I used my looks for validation. I realise now that the life of a reality star is vacuous and holds no real meaning.”
She added: “Reality TV is a dangerous place. Viewers think they know you and like to judge you. It is a breeding ground for trolls.
“I was getting my validation from those people. It was very unhealthy. I couldn’t be authentically me . . . It is a tiring and soul-destroying place to be. You are feeding yourself to the lions.
“My advice to younger people is to never do a reality show.”
Jess was a finalist in Celebrity Big Brother in 2018, “The Year Of The Woman” series, and revealed how she wanted to break the stereotype of glamour models.
But a conversation with fellow contestant, former Coronation Street star Amanda Barrie, led her to return to her career in acting.
Since then she has appeared in several low-budget films, including the 2019 horror film The Tombs, the 2016 British crime drama Retribution and 2017’s action film Dangerous Game, alongside fellow reality stars Darren Day and Calum Best.
And her latest project sees her play a footballer’s fiancée in the Amazon Prime comedy Keep Calm & Carry On, which starts next month.
She promises she will be seen in a whole new light.
Jess said: “I play this late-20s wag, Danielle, whose famous football fiancé dumps her, and I have to move home with my eccentric mum, Susan, and stepfather Peter.
“I might be dating a former footballer but I’m not a wag, I’m a real homebody and I’m quiet.
“Jermaine and I love watching Netflix and going to the gym.
“We like going to work and we motivate one another.
“Danielle’s whole dream has just been to be this wag who lives off her footballer partner, whereas I could never stop work because I would lose purpose.
“I can’t be one of those people who doesn’t do anything. Whenever I feel like I’m lacking purpose, that’s when I need to focus, because I can’t bear that feeling.
“So I am the complete opposite to my character in that respect.
“But it’s ironic that I’m with Jermaine and Danielle is a wannabe wag. But she got dumped and I haven’t!”
Jess has been dating the ex-Liverpool winger since last Christmas and insists she has not been put off by his chequered past.
Exposed to drugs, crime and alcohol as a child, Jermaine had four different step-mums by the age of ten. Married and divorced, he developed a reputation for being a party boy and serial cheater. But Jess insists she has never seen that side of him.
She said: “He is really devoted to me and has such a kind heart. He helps look after my mum Debbie, who is blind, and is great at sorting things out, like her phone.
“For the past few years I had been my dad Colin’s carer and Jermaine was at my dad’s bedside when he passed away from lung cancer recently.
“He had never seen a person die close up before so that was really tough for him but he stood by me.”
Jess has also had a difficult past. As a child she witnessed domestic violence in the home and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result. She got a scholarship to performing arts school Italia Conti as a teenager but had to leave when her mum started to lose her sight due to the condition uveal effusion syndrome.
Jess also suffered the trauma of losing her 13-month-old nephew, who died of meningitis while he was in her care. It led her to fall into a terrible depression and she attempted suicide.
She went through counselling and started taking anti-depressants. She later accepted an offer from Towie to try to get back into acting.
Jess, who dumped her ex-husband, rugby player Denny Solomona, after he cheated on her in 2017, was targeted by trolls when she appeared on Celebrity Big Brother. She said: “While I was on there everyone watching hated my ‘squeaky’ voice and I had about 96 per cent of England saying how much they hated it.
“Things like that were really bad for my mental health and I started to spiral into depression.”
She decided to cut back on using social media and stopped posting bikini shots of herself, losing more than 100,000 followers on Instagram.
Jess said: “It doesn’t bother me because I no longer align with what some people want to see.
“Now I’m just happy with who I am. I’m happy in my mind, so therefore I am happy in my body.”
And being in a stable relationship with Jermaine is also a big help. She said: “This has been the most confident I’ve been in myself — in my looks, in my personality — that I have ever been.
“Jermaine does contribute to that. I don’t need constant validation but I know if I do myself up and we go out for dinner, he’ll go, ‘You look great’. And I’m like, ‘Thank you’.
“It just gives you that lift. But it’s not something I base my worth on any more. And that’s what I used to do.
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“There have been a lot of difficult times in my past but I don’t regret them because they have all brought me to where I am today, and to Jermaine.
“He wants me to do well, is supportive of my dreams to keep acting and I don’t think I have ever been more suited to someone.”
