Hollyoaks legend's friends on show 'stopped talking to her' after she was axed
Steph, 47, appeared in the Channel 4 soap intermittently for almost three decades between 1996 and 2024.
The actress part of a mass cast exodus ahead of a huge revamp in September, which saw a reduction of episodes and a game-changing time jump.
Cindy and her little brother Tom (Ellis Hollins) made a quick escape after learning the truth behind Dave Williams' (Dominic Power) identity.
As the notorious gangster 'Blue', he plagued Warren Fox's (Jamie Lomas) life for weeks over the summer, kidnapping his children and forcing him to confess to the murder of his mother.
After Dave pulled a gun on the siblings, Cindy whacked her husband over the head with a stapler before they both fled.
Desperate to depart before she found herself in more danger, she resolved to stay with older sister Jude in Spain – with Tom agreeing that it would be best for him to move on too.
Now, almost a year on, she has told the Secure The Insecure podcast that she misses her friendships with her fellow 'Oaks actors.
'I did feel the quiet from the family that I once knew on the show,' she admitted.
'No one's picking up the phone. No one's checking in. Everyone's just getting on with their life.'
She continued: 'When you're in that Hollyoaks bubble and they call it a family – I feel you're only family when you're in it.
'You pour your heart out to these people, and then you go, and it's like it never happened.
'Where did that friendship go? There's only a couple of people I'm in contact with.'
In April, she addressed her 'vulnerability' upon starting a new venture away from the acting industry, working as a life coach.
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'That's all I've known for the last 30 years. When I lost my job last year, I knew that I would be in a place of vulnerability, because it wasn't guaranteed that I was just going to get another role, and you know, go onto the next project, it's really hard out there, it's not easy,' she said on Instagram. More Trending
'That's one of the reasons why I stayed in Hollyoaks for so long because it was security and I was doing what I loved every single day.
'I didn't even question it, so when I became vulnerable, I thought well what else can I do that would give me a purpose, and something that I was passionate about.
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'I've dealt with a lot of mental health in my life, and when I was decided to train as a life coach, I thought that this would help me in that respect. It did. I was my first client.'
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MORE: Emmerdale's Beth Cordingly pays loving tribute to fellow TV legend partner
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