Shannon Murray: model and more

Actress, model, rights activist, would-be legal eagle and the face of Debenhams' fashion. The phrase "woman of many parts" might have been made to measure for Shannon Murray who shares her ambition and enthusiasm with Cathy Reay

Some people walk straight out of university into the job of their dreams. Some are spotted by an eagle eye on the street. Some just “know the right people”. But for the majority of us it can take years to find what we are really looking for, and that’s no different for this month’s Disability Now cover star Shannon Murray. She smiles: “It’s been a very, very slow snowball; it hasn’t been an avalanche!”

But after a stint on Channel 4’s How To Look Good Naked turned into an opportunity to model for a major clothes retailer, it looks like Shannon’s career may be turning a corner.

I meet the gorgeous thirty-something in Soho on one of her rare days off from moving house, working full-time in business, filling in law firm application forms and, you know, appearing on billboards in sexy lingerie.

“Last December How To Look Good Naked (HTLGN) promoted the programme by putting pictures of me on either side of a London bus for a day and in one I wore lingerie. Because it was winter I was bundled up in clothes but I felt so naked looking at it!” Shannon flashes a huge grin that makes it nigh on impossible to believe she’s embarrassed by anything.

Despite her initial nervousness, she says that when the HTLGN producers asked her to join their campaign to get major retailers to use disabled models in their advertising, she jumped at the chance. “They had this great idea that they would take photos of disabled women to retail executives, show them that we can look just as good as non-disabled models and ask why we aren’t being used.”

It so happened that at the same time Debenhams was about to relaunch its Principles range, with the concept that it worked for every woman of every size and shape. They booked Shannon for a shoot and now she gets to bask in the glory of being the first disabled model to feature in a major retailer’s shop window.

“I’ve met disabled women who are so unconfident and unsure of how they can look great, so I was really pleased Gok Wan and the team treated it, and me, like anyone else on the programme,” she says.

“After I became disabled I didn’t think for a minute that 20 years from then something like this would be happening.”

In fact 20 years ago Shannon thought her childhood dreams of becoming a successful actress were completely shattered. Aged 14 on summer holiday with her family she fell and broke her neck, leaving her paraplegic, unable to walk unaided.

Shannon recounts her year-long rehabilitation process: “In hospital I watched lots of TV, and all I could think about was how there was this huge lack of disabled people on anything except the Paralympics. I really began to believe that acting was out the window.”

But she says a small part of her hungered to be the one to break down those barriers. Raised in London by hugely successful music industry-bod parents (her dad was a tour manager and her mother created clothes for assorted A-list popstars), it is safe to assume her determination can be traced back to her upbringing.

“My attitude comes from my parents. If someone tells me something isn’t possible then my brain just thinks ok, how do I get round this?”

But after spending her childhood years behind the scenes Shannon felt disillusioned by the music business, so at seven-years-old she enrolled into drama school, spending her free time in her room acting out made-up stories with her Cabbage Patch dolls. “I performed in my own little world, I was such a drama queen!”, she recounts.

It wasn’t until much later, in a sixth form common room, a friend persuaded her to enter a disabled modelling competition advertised in The Sun. “I just remember that I kept getting the callbacks and then I won and suddenly I had an agent too,” she says. “Things started to change; Model in a Million came with its own media circus. I was getting interviews and sure enough the offers for TV work slowly trickled in too.”

Though Shannon felt uncomfortable that the opportunities offered to her were all in programmes specifically to do with disability: “I’d get offers from Sunday morning disability programmes and I began to wonder why I should be relegated, it was frustrating.”

But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. Shannon secured the lead in Stephen Poliakoff’s BBC drama Friends and Crocodiles, a guest spot on Casualty and a role in the rather dubiously titled (nevertheless great) Planet Arse for Channel 4. It was these she loved the most:

“You do things like Casualty and you love it and then when you’re finished you just want to be back there. I loved the sets, the people; I wanted to be there every day.”

Simultaneously Shannon was picked up for modelling work for disability spreads in Just 17, French Elle, News of the World and, strangely, the Spice Girls fan club magazine. As a consequence she spent her late teens flitting between jobs while also trying to study a law degree.

“There were quiet periods and times when it was busy so I knew I’d need a back up plan, which is why I followed law. I didn’t want to get to 50 and say ‘I’ve spent 30 years waiting for a great acting role’. I didn’t want to look back and know I spent my whole life wishing for something that didn’t happen,” she says. “You’ve got to make things happen, so it was at that point I was thinking ok, what shall I do next?”

Two years later, worked to the bone and partied out, Shannon contracted pneumonia and was forced to leave university and her frantic student life in Manchester behind. After recovery she got a job at the jewellers Tiffanys and ended up staying put: “I really enjoyed having a job, earning money, I actually stayed there nearly five years before I kicked myself into gear and went back to education.”

Shannon re-studied law at Westminster, graduated in 2006, and followed it with two years at weekend Law School. So, after seven years of studying the subject, does she feel like giving up everything to travel that path?

“The way I see it is if the TV thing works out then great, but if not then a career as a lawyer beckons. Sometimes I think I might even be happier as a lawyer! As I learnt through Debenhams and through what actor friends have told me, being on TV comes with its own issues, with people thinking they have a right to say what they want about you because you’re in the public eye. The pressures of making sure you look and sound good are always there.”

While she’s been busy shaping her alternative career route, things have changed radically for disabled people in the media. The big change is simply that there is a hell of a lot more of them on the telly. Shannon agrees: “The more you see other people onscreen the more you know we’re kicking the door down and that fills me with hope for the future.

“I love presenting, I love drama; Cerrie Burnell, a couple of other talented disabled women and I were talking recently about how we should launch our own version of Loose Women. It would be hysterical!”

The world might not be quite ready for that, but Shannon isn’t waiting around. Whatever path she ends up choosing, she’s got big goals ahead:

“Life is there and you can’t sit back and let it pass you by. Yeah there are obstacles, the environment isn’t easy for someone in a wheelchair or crutches or whatever, but if you’re up for the challenge then just, you know, do it!”

Model, actress, designer, lawyer or human rights activist: whatever her guise, you’ll soon be hearing a lot more from Shannon Murray.

• How To Look Good Naked featuring Shannon Murray will premiere on Channel 4 on Wednesday 1st September at 8.30pm or you can watch it after that date at channel4.com/4od

•• Shannon will be participating in the Disabled & Sexy catwalk fashion show to raise money for the Jennifer Trust for Spinal Muscular Atrophy at the Tabernacle, Notting Hill in London on 25 October. Visit disabledandsexy.co.uk for more information.