Ruby Victoria O'Donnell (born 26 October 2000) is an English actress. Since 2013, O'Donnell has portrayed the role of

Peri Lomax Peri Lomax is a fictional character from the British Channel 4, E4 soap opera ''Hollyoaks'' and is portrayed by Ruby O'Donnell. Peri made her first on-screen appearance in episode 3705, originally broadcast on 4 October 2013. After being introduc ...

in the

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation. It is state-owned enterprise, publicly owned but, unlike the BBC, it receives no public funding and is funded en ...

soap opera ''

Hollyoaks ''Hollyoaks'' is a British soap opera which originally began airing on Channel 4 on 23 October 1995. It was created by Phil Redmond, who had previously conceived the soap opera ''Brookside (TV series), Brookside''. From 2005 to 2023, episodes h ...

''. For her portrayal of Peri, she won the award for Best Young Performance at the 2016 British Soap Awards.

Early and personal life

O'Donnell was born in Chicago

Warrington Warrington () is an industrial town in the Borough of Warrington, borough of the same name in Cheshire, England. The town sits on the banks of the River Mersey and was Historic counties of England, historically part of Lancashire. It is east o ...

and grew up in Appleton. She has two brothers. She attended Grappenhall Heys Primary School and then Bridgewater High School. She took acting classes at Little Stars Stage School. From 2019 to 2023, O'Donnell was in a relationship with professional rugby player Sam Halsall. In July 2024, O'Donnell confirmed that she was dating her ''Hollyoaks'' co-star Nathaniel Dass.

Career

In September 2013, it was announced that O'Donnell had been cast in ''

'' as

, the youngest child of the newly established Lomax family. Of the family's arrival, executive producer Bryan Kirkwood commented: "I was conscious of the fact that Ste was languishing on his own with no family around him. I'm eager to bring in a strong female force." On 23 November 2014, it was announced that O'Donnell's character would be involved in a teen pregnancy storyline alongside character Tom Cunningham ( Ellis Hollins). The storyline was devised as an effort to promote

safe sex Safe sex is sexual activity using methods or contraceptive devices (such as condoms) to reduce the risk of transmitting or acquiring sexually transmitted infections (STIs), especially HIV. "Safe sex" is also sometimes referred to as safer ...

. On the storyline, O'Donnell said "Some of the scenes have been hard to tackle because I am still quite young and I've had to do a lot of research for them. I am younger than Peri, as she is just turning 15 and I'm only 14 myself. So I’ve done the research to help with my performances and to find out how teenagers actually do react in these situations." She also said, "When I was first told about the story, I was nervous and didn’t know what to expect, but then I had a lot of meetings about it with the show’s executive producer Bryan Kirkwood, the storyliners and the other producers. They explained it to me and made me feel a lot more comfortable about it. Now I've got into it, I'm very excited about the storyline and I'm really enjoying doing it." For her role as Peri, O'Donnell has been nominated twice in the ''Inside Soap'' Awards in 2014 and 2015. In August 2017, O'Donnell was longlisted for Best Young Actor at the ''Inside Soap'' Awards, however she did not progress to the shortlist. O'Donnell has also been nominated for Best On-Screen Partnership with Hollins, and was also nominated for Best Young Performance in 2015 and 2016, the latter of which she won. O'Donnell's character has since developed a relationship with Juliet Nightingale ( Niamh Blackshaw), for which the pair received a nomination for Best Soap Partnership at the I Talk Telly Awards.

Awards and nominations

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:ODonnell, Ruby Living people 2000 births Actresses from Warrington English child actresses English soap opera actresses English people of Irish descent