Early career

Ripley graduated from drama school in 1990.^[12] Her first role afterwards was playing Osatko in the chorus of Around the World in 80 Days at the Liverpool Playhouse during the 1990–1991 pantomime season. She had ten lines in Japanese.^[5][13] Her next role came at the end of the year in the Manchester Royal Exchange's production of Medea.^[5][14] Ripley recalled, "It was only my second job, and I took it all very seriously, in my Greek sarong and my torch of fire, having to burble in tongues."^[5]

Ripley's early television and film career was characterised by minor roles as prostitutes or mistresses;^[5][9] in what was to be her film debut, she filmed two scenes as a prostitute in the film Frankenstein (1994), directed by Kenneth Branagh. In the first scene, her character was strangled by the creature (played by Robert De Niro's stand-in). The second scene featured De Niro himself, though Ripley's character was lying dead in a mortuary throughout. Pleased with what looked like her breakout role, Ripley bought a dress for the premiere, though she was distraught when Branagh sent her a card apologising for cutting her scenes from the finished film.^[5]

The same year, she filmed the role of Karen Hughes, the sister of a mute character who believes she sees a murder, in the low-budget film Mute Witness (1995), directed by Anthony Waller.^[5] After Mute Witness's British television premiere in 1999, a Daily Record critic wrote that Ripley's dramatic scenes were not as good as her comic ones.^[15] In 1995, she appeared in an episode of Channel 4's Alan Davies vehicle One for the Road and made her last theatre appearance for almost thirty years as a cast member in the Bush Theatre's Two Lips, Indifferent Red.^[16]

In 1996, she had a role in Stephen Poliakoff's Frontiers, and played a club barmaid in Dennis Potter's penultimate television series Karaoke. The following year she had roles in the comedy film Roseanna's Grave (Paul Weiland, 1997), an episode of The Bill—as a woman whose nanny is accused of stealing from her—and a two-part episode of the Kevin Whately series The Broker's Man as a police officer.^[17] Her role in The Broker's Man was one of the few occasions on which Ripley played a police officer; she has frequently declined offers of similar roles because she does not want to "summon up the misery" to play a character that performs post-mortem examinations or investigates murders when she could be starring in more true to life and funny programmes.^[18]

Breakthrough roles

In 1996, Ripley auditioned for Granada Television's Cold Feet, a television pilot about the romances of three couples living in Manchester. She believed she was reading for the role of Rachel, the "young, pretty one", and was surprised to discover that she was wanted for Jenny, the "northern housewife". In the audition, she performed with an inelegant approximation of a local Manchester accent. The producers found her approach to the role refreshing from other actresses, who were seen as too "finger-wagging". Ripley won the role, and appeared opposite John Thomson and James Nesbitt in the programme.^[19] After the pilot won an award, ITV's director of programmes commissioned a series of Cold Feet, so Ripley worked on improving her character's accent by speaking to locals and mimicking their speech.^[20] Her supporting character from the pilot episode was given a bigger role in the series; in the first episode (broadcast in 1998), Jenny gives birth to her first child. At that time, Ripley had never experienced childbirth, so copied birth scenes she had seen in other television series.^[21] An Independent review of the first series in November 1998 noted, "Fay Ripley has a range of quirky mannerisms that are more reminiscent of Elaine in Seinfeld than of any other Brit-com woman."^[22]

Ripley's performance in the first series won her a nomination for Best TV Comedy Actress at the British Comedy Awards 1999.^[23] For her performance in the third series (2000), in which her character separates from her husband and dates another man (played by Ben Miles), she was nominated for the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress.^[24] During pre-production of the fourth series (2001), Ripley announced to the producers that she would be leaving the show, partly because she did not want to spend five months living in Manchester away from her home in London and wanted to spend more time with her husband, and partly to take other roles which she would otherwise not be able to do. She asked the writer Mike Bullen to either kill off Jenny or have her lose a limb. Bullen refused and instead wrote a plot in which Jenny moves to New York.^[5] Ripley returned to the series for a guest appearance in the final episode (2003).

In 2000, Ripley appeared in the British dogme film The Announcement,^[5] as well as playing lead female character Grace Bingley—opposite Paul Rhys—in the Granada television pilot I Saw You, which used many of the same production staff as Cold Feet. David Belcher of The Herald called Ripley "perfectly scatty, tousled and self-sufficient" in the role,^[25] and Joe Joseph of The Times complimented her comic timing.^[26] Ripley returned to I Saw You for a three-episode miniseries in 2002. She considers I Saw You, in which she acted alongside her husband Daniel Lapaine, the television show she is most proud to have worked on.^[27]

Further projects

Having left Cold Feet, Ripley began to take on more leading roles; her first role was as housewife Deanna in the BBC thriller The Green-Eyed Monster, which was broadcast in September 2001. She researched her character, a murderer, by visiting a coroner.^[6] Guardian critic Gareth McLean wrote of her performance, "Ripley did a good job of exorcising the ghost of Jenny Gifford [...] by coolly cranking up the insane desperation and needy malevolence to an impressive degree."^[28] In 2002, she played domestic abuse victim Donna Massey in Danny Brocklehurst's The Stretford Wives. Ripley was initially not eager to play another character from around Manchester so soon after leaving Cold Feet, but she changed her mind after reading the script. She did not research spousal abuse to play her character, a woman struggling to bring up her two children in a run-down house while her husband is imprisoned, because she did not find it difficult to "work out what it's like to be scared and want to protect your kids".^[29]

Also in 2002, Ripley played Rose Bell in the ITV post-war period drama Dead Gorgeous, alongside Helen McCrory. The following year, she provided the voice of Meg in the ITV adaptation of the Meg and Mog children's books, before playing Jill in the third series of the BBC One sitcom Bedtime at the end of 2003.^[17] In 2004, Ripley had her first of three on-screen partnerships with Martin Clunes, playing Jane White in the CBBC adaptation of Fungus the Bogeyman.^[30] The following year, she played the guest role of corrupt police inspector Sam Phillips in the BBC TV series Hustle, a role that received praise from The Times.^[31]

In 2006, Ripley played the role of child abductor Linda Holder in the two-part ITV drama Bon Voyage, starring alongside Ben Miles, Rachael Blake and Daniel Ryan. She was offered the part without having to audition, and took it because she wanted the opportunity to play an antagonist. She liked the style of Canadian director John Fawcett in making the thriller, as it differed to that of other British thrillers, which she believed were poorly filmed. Ripley filmed the role in Canada during the later weeks of her second pregnancy, so her character was dressed in baggy clothes to hide her bump. Her pregnancy also caused changes to the script; originally her character was to run through a forest, fall off a cliff and "die a gruesome death".^[32] Reviewing, Thomas Sutcliffe of The Independent and Gareth McLean of The Guardian noted that Ripley's pregnancy was poorly disguised.^[33][34] In complimenting the performance of the whole cast, Brian McIver of the Daily Record praised Ripley's portrayal of Linda as "scary but sympathetic".^[35]

Bon Voyage marked Ripley's last television acting appearance until 2009. During that time she appeared as a guest on panel shows and talk shows.^[17] In 2009, she returned to television screens as Nicola Perrin alongside Martin Clunes' eponymous character in the BBC One sitcom Reggie Perrin. She took the role because she had previously worked with Clunes and the writer Simon Nye.^[36] As the series was Ripley's first studio sitcom, she approached the role with apprehension; she told The Independent on Sunday, "I basically just hung off Martin's coat-tails and hoped for the best."^[37] Ripley compared Nicola to Reggie's house-bound wife Elizabeth in the original series, noting that the modern character needed a job and independence from her husband because of changes in society.^[30] She reprised the role in the second series in 2010, after which the series was cancelled.^[36][38]

2009 also saw the broadcast of Monday Monday, an ITV comedy drama series in which Ripley plays Christine Frances, an alcoholic human resources manager at a supermarket head office that moves from London to Leeds. She took the role because it was different to characters she had previously played.^[39]

Other work

During her time on Cold Feet, Ripley hosted the Channel 4 show Sofa Melt, a relationships chat show in the vein of Trisha. The show lasted for one series of 60 episodes, broadcast in 1999. In Scotland on Sunday, critic Stewart Hennessey called Ripley's presenting fantastic and called the show itself "utterly without any intelligent merit whatsoever. It is just unmissable because the people on it are hilariously stupid. Set the vid, show it at parties."^[40] Ripley said of the show retrospectively, "It was the most terrifying thing I've ever done."^[41] In 2003, she presented a short film advocating Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire for the BBC's Big Read series^[42] and in 2009, she presented an episode of the Blighty documentary series My Brilliant Britain.^[43]

In 2004, she appeared on the Star in a Reasonably Priced Car segment of Top Gear, where she discussed her car history with presenter Jeremy Clarkson. On her celebrity lap of the Top Gear test track, she achieved a lap time of 1:53, making her 38th on the Suzuki Liana leader board.^[44] The same year, she participated in a major advertising venture by The National Lottery, playing "Lady Luck" alongside a unicorn voiced by Graham Norton.^[45] In 2008, she appeared alongside Martin Clunes in a series of advertisements for Tesco Direct^[46] and, since 2009, has starred with Mark Addy in a series of adverts for Tesco's various brands.^[47]

In 2007, Ripley announced that she would be writing a cookbook about family food. She said, "I want to help people prepare good food for their kids, really practical stuff that's easy, quick, healthy and you can whizz up in the blender for the baby."^[48] Fay's Family Food was published by Michael Joseph, an imprint of Penguin Books, in April 2009^[49] and was selected by Marie-Claire Digby of The Irish Times as a "summer read".^[50] Ripley's second book, entitled What's For Dinner, was published in April 2012. Since the release of her first book, she has resisted offers from television production companies to make her own cookery series. In November 2016, Ripley guest presented an episode of The One Show with Alex Jones. She guest presented an episode with Angela Scanlon in January 2017. Ripley currently narrates Grime & Punishment on C5.

In late 2022, Ripley made a return to the stage with The National Theatre's production of Kerry Jackson, in which she played the eponymous lead role.^[51]