Former EastEnders actor Joe Absolom looks so different 23 years after leaving the soap.
Joe had a massive storyline during his time in the soap in which his character, Matthew Rose, was wrongly jailed for the murder of Saskia Duncan (Deborah Sheridan-Taylor) in 1999.
Saskia was bludgeoned to death with an ashtray by her boyfriend Steve Owen (Martin Kemp), and though he didn’t kill her, Matthew did help Steve hide her body.
It sent the nation into a frenzy and Matthew was eventually had his conviction overturned and was released.
Though it has been over two decades since we last saw Joe in Walford, he has still been on our screens.
His most notable acting appearance since EastEnders has been Doc Martin, in which he played Al Large for the entirety of its run from 2004 until just last year in 2022.
It’s not just his looks that have changed, either, as he moved from London to Cornwall, where the medical comedy-drama was filmed in 2009.
Talking to The Mirror about making the decision to move there with his wife, Liz, and their three children: Lyla, Casper, and Daisy, he said:
“I remember sitting on the beach in Cornwall with [Lyla] on a day off from filming. She was asking where the tide had gone. I made up some sort of hare-brained father’s explanation. We drove back to London the next day and unfortunately a teenager had just been murdered outside our local supermarket."
He then explained that after their home was burgled while Liz and two eldest children were home, the decision became final.
He explained: "My children’s lives are in Cornwall now. Daisy was born here – she’s got clotted cream in the blood."
The 44 year old spoke to us exclusively in 2018 about a showdown that his character was supposed to have, but explained that there were alternate endings because the original was deemed “too violent.”
“I remember filming the episode with Martin, and we filmed two versions as the original was too violent to air.
“I’d already left the soap and finished filming around December.
“They rung me up after Christmas and said, ‘We need to film it again, can you come back and re-film the ending?’.”
He went on to detail the original ending: “In the original version he got hit with a bottle and it was a bit too violent. So somewhere there’s a different ending to it!”
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