Gavin and Stacey star Joanna Page has revealed she was kidnapped in South Africa by a taxi driver who held her hostage in his car.
The Welsh actress said she was ‘incredibly lucky’ to have escaped the man, who claimed to be a taxi driver before keeping her in his vehicle for 90 minutes while repeatedly telling her he was going to strip her naked.
The 48-year old-said the terrifying incident occurred during filming for BBC costume drama To the Ends of the Earth, which aired in 2005.
The show starred Benedict Cumberbatch, who also escaped a kidnapping in the country just two weeks after Page in 2004.
Page said she ignored warnings about dangers in the country to go to a shopping centre because she was bored in the hotel and didn’t want a chaperone.
But after going to a local shopping centre on her own, she attempted to get a taxi back to her hotel only for the man to trap her in his car and tell her he would ‘take off all of my clothes’ and ‘take photos of me’.
Speaking to the Five Brilliant Things podcast, the Love Actually actress said she was ‘in such a state’ after the most dangerous situation she has ever experienced.
It comes after she has recently revealed the perils of being an actress, including being groped by a TV host and unwanted sexual attention from predatory directors.
Gavin and Stacey star Joanna Page has revealed she was kidnapped in South Africa by a taxi driver who held her hostage in his car
The 48-year old-said the terrifying incident occurred during filming for BBC costume drama To the Ends of the Earth (pictured), which aired in 2005
Speaking about the kidnapping, she said: ‘We were doing this costume drama for the BBC called To the Ends of the Earth.
‘When I first arrived to film, some of the cast were there before me because I’m a character that comes in later.
‘So I got to the hotel and they said you can’t go anywhere without your chaperone.
‘And I thought “oh this is ridiculous, I’m really bored, I need to get out and about and do some stuff”.
‘So I said “can you just get me a taxi and take me to a shopping centre somewhere”.
‘And they said we really don’t think you should do this and I said “well I want to do it”.’
Page told how she arrived at the shopping centre and spent most of the day there, before ‘the whole atmosphere changed’.
She continued: ‘So I went to a shopping centre, walked around for the whole day and it must have got to about 4:30 in the afternoon and then the whole atmosphere changed.
‘It started feeling really menacing. I had no way of getting back to the hotel, I didn’t have a car, I didn’t really know where I was going.
‘I remember leaving the shopping centre and there was a carpark and loads of fellas with cars everywhere.
‘And I thought “oh my God, I’m in the s***, I’m going to have to just go up to someone with a car and ask him to take me home because otherwise I’m just stuck here, I genuinely don’t know what I’m going to do”.
‘So I went up to this fella and asked if he was a taxi and he said “yes”, and I said “please will you take me back to this hotel”.
Speaking to the Five Brilliant Things podcast, the Love Actually actress (second right, in Gavin and Stacey) said she was ‘in such a state’ after the most dangerous situation she has ever experienced
‘So I got in the car and then he drove off and he drove around for about an hour and a half telling me that he was going to take me somewhere, he was going to take off all of my clothes and he was going to take photos of me.
‘And I just remember thinking, “Oh my God”, you know how most of the time you get in dodgy situations but think you can get yourself out of it quite easily.
‘But it was the only situation I think I’ve ever been in in my life where I thought “you’re in the s***. This is serious. You can’t get yourself out of this. I don’t know what I’m going to do”.
‘I thought right, OK just laugh with him, make him laugh, tell some jokes, be quite saucy back with him, if he says he’s going to do this laugh back, be quite cheeky.
‘So I did this for the hour and a half that he just drove me around and around and eventually he took me back to the hotel.’
Page added: ‘I got out of the car and ran straight up to reception. I was in such a state and told them everything that had happened.
‘They said “you’re so incredibly lucky. Just never ever do anything like that again”.’
Page’s revelation comes months after Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch revealed in January that he was kidnapped at gunpoint during filming for the same costume drama.
The actor, 49, was on a driving excursion with some friends during his downtime when the car they were in got a flat tire.
While they were on the side of the road, they were robbed and abducted by six men and forced into a car.
They were driven around in the car for hours and then tied up at the side of the road and ordered to sit execution style before the robbers fled.
Speaking about the ordeal to Variety, Cumberbatch said: ‘It gave me a sense of time, but not necessarily a good one. It made me impatient to live a life less ordinary, and I’m still dealing with that impatience.’
Her torrid time in South Africa is far from the only obstacle Page has faced in her career since she graduated from RADA in 1998.
She has described often having to ‘call out’ directors and colleagues on set, especially when filming intimate sex scenes.
She said: ‘I would call them out, being forthright has probably got me out of some scrapes because there were no intimacy co-ordinators when I came out of drama school. You read the sex scene and just had to get on with it.’
Page also told how she experienced being groped by a TV host while filming after being warned by a producer about his ‘handsy’ behaviour.
The Gavin and Stacey star, 48, wrote about the incident in her new book Lush: My Story – From Swansea To Stacey And Everything In Between, and said it felt like being ‘mauled at a zoo’ before fighting him off.
In new interview ahead of her memoir’s release today she said: ‘Halfway through filming, he starts groping me.
‘I hit his hands and said: “What do you think you’re bloody doing? Keep your f***ing hands to yourself!” Jesus, I feel like I’m in Bristol Zoo being mauled by the lions.’
‘He stopped. It was bizarre, a female producer telling you this was going to happen, but it’s what you got used to.’
Asked why she was not naming the man in her book, she admitted lawyers had warned her about going public.
She told The Times: ‘The legal people said: ‘Be careful!”
