Former Brookside star Jennifer Ellison says she felt like she was 'in two parallel worlds' after being targeted by a machete wielding criminal gang in Liverpool.
The actress was at the height of her fame after starring as teenager Emily Shadwick in the Channel 4 soap opera before embarking on a short-lived pop career.
But a high-profile relationship with ex-fiancé Anthony Richardson, who was linked to criminal underworld figures in Liverpool and jailed for a vicious sword attack in 2011, made her a vulnerable target for rival gang members.
Speaking to Anything Goes with James English, Ellison, 40, claims she was forced off the road after being followed from her house during one of two terrifying knife attacks.
'Literally one day I drove out of my house and a well known family in Liverpool chased me in the car and [I] drove over the central embankment and the car lifted off its feet and then next thing I know they've got this machete,' she recalled.
Former Brookside star Jennifer Ellison says she felt like she was 'in two parallel worlds' after being targeted by a machete wielding gang in Liverpool
A high-profile relationship with ex-fiancé Anthony Richardson, who was linked to criminal underworld figures in Liverpool, made her a vulnerable target for rival gang members
'I’m driving…and he’s banging at my car with his machete and it’s just literally flying at me. I'm at the height of fame like massively, massively famous and it's like two parallel worlds.'
In a separate incident the actress was shaken after three masked men set upon her Range Rover as she left a Liverpool fashion show with Richardson, who was left with a stomach wound after being struck with a machete.
Worse would follow when her home was peppered with bullets during a drive-by shooting while she was filming a screen adaptation of The Phantom Of The Opera in London.
Recalling the 2003 incident, she said: 'I was massively successful, there was no Instagram, there was no influencers. It was fame, when fame was fame, and I'm working with Hollywood A listers.
'I'm 'n a hotel in London, and on new news back home in Liverpool my house is being shot at with an AK47, and I'm having to go into work with Andrew Lloyd Weber, Gerard Butler... it was so embarrassing.'
Ellison admitted some of the cast were concerned about working with her following the episode, with some pushing for another actress to fill her role as Meg Giry.
'There was concerns because of what had happened at home and some of the cast didn't want me to continue filming, they wanted me to be, almost, sacked.
'But the director Gerard Butler [the film was actually directed by Joel Schumacher] fought for me and said she's going nowhere.'
Speaking to Anything Goes with James English, Ellison, 40, claims she was forced off the road after being followed from her house during one incident
At the time Ellison's taxi driver father was living at the property, and she admits it was only luck that prevented him being home when the shooting occurred in the early hours of the morning.
'The bullets had gone through the front door, through the kitchen door, through the back window and ended up in the back neighbors roof,' she said.
Ellison first met sunbed salesman Richardson when she was 16, but it would be a year before they embarked on what she later claimed was an abusive seven-year relationship.
And she claims the abuse included being smashed over the head with a beer bottle while they were on a night out.
She said: 'We went out to a nightclub and he’d started being dead funny all day. And anyway, he started drinking and whatever. I was no angel but we had this argument in the middle of a nightclub.
'I drove out of my house and a well known family in Liverpool chased me in the car and [I] drove over the central embankment... then next thing I know they've got this machete,' she recalled
Richardson was jailed for eight-and-a-half years for a brutal attack carried out in October 2010 (pictured, his mugshot)
'As I turned away with my drink, he just went like that, bang, on the back of my head with a Budweiser bottle.
'I went like that with my hands on my head and it was blood, but clots of blood. I will never, ever forget it. He put a blanket over my head and got me into the ambulance but there were photographers everywhere and the blood was running down my legs.
'It was all over the newspapers, on the news and everything. The hospital was like, "your extensions saved your life."'
The couple eventually separated in 2007, with Richardson eventually jailed for a separate attack on boxer Lee Siner.
Richardson was caught on camera battering Siner with a car crook lock after chasing him up the stairs and throwing a chair at him.
Richardson was caught on camera battering boxer Lee Siner (pictured) with a car crook lock after chasing him up the stairs and throwing a chair at him
Two other attackers then hacked at the victim cutting his upper arms and legs in a fearsome revenge attack following a petty dispute.
Siner had been dining in the Mediterranean restaurant Kimos, near Toxteth, Liverpool, when he was ambushed by three masked men armed with a samurai sword and baseball bat.
Richardson was jailed for eight-and-a-half years for the attack carried out in October 2010.
He dated Steven Gerrard's wife Alex Curran until 2002 before dating Ellison and later Celebrity Big Brother winner Chantelle Houghton.
