Newbury snooker club worker gets big break in Hollywood

That’s the incredible leap of actress Jackie Howe, recently extolled by the New York Times as “riveting” for her performance in Come on Eileen, an emotional film about a foul-mouthed single-mother driven to drink.
Jackie Howe worked at the snooker club for four years with her parents Morton and Marcella Evans, who owned it at the time, along with her sister, Sharon.
But how things have changed…Next month she flies to Hollywood to play a widow confined to a wheelchair in a chilling new film, The Dark. From her parents’ home in Newbury, Howe said: “Never in my wildest dreams when signing in new members, pulling pints behind the bar, and handling cues at my dad’s snooker club in West Street did I think that I’d end up in Hollywood.
“I play a wheelchair-bound widow who is struggling after a car crash that killed her husband and is now being wooed by a sinister Bible puncher and a possessive guy in a nearby apartment, and there’s a strange psychic woman secretly living in an attic.
“It’s absolutely crammed with mystery, tension, and intrigue – just like it was at the snooker club,” she joked. “It was great fun at the snooker club, not least from meeting all the many different characters who insisted on telling me all about their private lives.”
She also recalled that the national wheelchair snooker championships were held at the club every year, and said: “I can still remember how they coped physically and mentally, so even this brief experience might help me in a small way while preparing for the role.”
Jackie Howe now lives in North London with husband Simon, and their 16-year-old son Thomas, who are both highly-talented showbiz trumpeters.
About her huge Hollywood opportunity, she said: “There was marvellous reaction in the States to my role in Come on Eileen, and I had a fabulous review in the New York Times, so I’ve been invited back and offered a strong part in a chilling movie entitled The Dark.
“After four years at the snooker club, I set out to be a dancer, switched to acting and toured UK theatres in rep, and then picked up a few parts in small films, and in Holby City and The Bill on TV.”
Yet it was her dramatic performance as a drunk in Come on Eileen that magically opened the gilt-edged door to Hollywood.
So how did this clean-living, non-swearing, seldom drinker, and proud mother transform herself so convincingly? She said: “I had an instant empathy with it, even though it was nothing like me. I watched video footage of people with drink problems, and studied their eyes, then their body, and eventually their voice.
“Several people have shown deep concern for me after seeing the film. Some have even thought that I had a serious drink problem. Others have said that I must have been drunk when the film was being shot. Not a bit of it. It was pure acting…
“It also made me aware of what it must be like in real life for single-parent mums who turn to the bottle in their battle to cope. Everyone who’s going through such an ordeal has my deepest sympathy. After Come on Eileen’s brilliant reviews I’m bursting with energy and can’t get to Hollywood fast enough.”