Verity Rushworth, known for portraying Donna Windsor on the ITV soap Emmerdale over 11 years in two stints starting at age 12, reveals the challenges of life after the show. The 40-year-old mother of two now balances acting with a thriving career in property development.

From Soap Stardom to Stage Challenges

After leaving Emmerdale—where her character died by suicide on August 14, 2014—Rushworth pursued her dream of performing live on stage. She landed a role in Hairspray in London’s West End alongside Michael Ball at age 23, moving to the city solo.

“After 11 years of filming, there was just something inside me that wanted to tick the box of being on stage in front of a live audience and just experience that feeling,” she explains. “I was lucky enough to walk straight into Hairspray in the West End with Michael Ball, and that was at 23 and I had to move to London on my own and rent a flat and I thought, ‘Oh, this is brilliant’. And then it’s only after that that you become a jobbing actress that you realise it’s not so easy.”

She followed with more West End work and extensive touring but found theatre’s demands—eight shows weekly—increasingly tough with age and family. “As you get older and you have a family you just really want to get back into TV because theatre is eight shows a week, and commuting to London with kids is really difficult,” she reflects.

Building a Property Empire

Rushworth’s passion for property began early. At 21, she bought her first home in Leeds and used earnings from Emmerdale to flip houses. Now, she runs MartinRushworth, a successful development firm, with partner Anthony Martin, whom she met on a blind date through a mutual friend. Their shared interest in property sparked an instant connection.

She retrained in bookkeeping to serve as the company’s financial director, handling accounts, payroll, and more. “I retrained, and I did a qualification in bookkeeping, so I’m now the financial director of the company, and I do all the books and accounts and the payroll and everything, and it works alongside my acting and auditions and self tapes and the kids. So it’s just all fit into place, really,” she says.

Raffling a Dream Home for Charity

The couple now offers a chance to win a £600,000 four-bedroom detached home in Kent through a raffle at £3 per ticket, aiming for 300,000 sales. Profits will fund ECHO (Evelina Children’s Heart Organisation), meaningful after Martin’s daughter underwent life-saving heart surgery at 18 months and now thrives at age seven.

“Anthony has built five four-bed detached houses, beautiful houses, and he could just put them through his estate agency and make a bit of commission. It’s a successful business,” Rushworth notes. “But he was so aware of how difficult it is at the moment for people to get on the property ladder nowadays. He thought, what if we tried to raffle one, and if it worked, that could be like a new thing—then we’re actually giving back.”