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Reference > Erinsborough News > Is Ramsay Street Ready For This?

Neighbours newcomer Kimberley Davies isn’t the typical girl next door...

Her glamorous features have taken her around the world as a model for magazines and television commercials. But a home address in Ramsay Street is where Kimberley, 19, would rather be.

“It’s a dream come true for me,” she says. “I really thought this was unattainable and now, here I am!” Kimberley, playing flirty hairdresser Annalise Hartman, is part of a push for extra energy in the soap and more storylines for the younger actors, including Scott Michaelson, Natalie Imbruglia and Rachel Blakely. She turned down roles in Stark and City High to join Neighbours - and not because her boyfriend Scott Michaelson is in the cast.

“That didn’t influence me at all,” she says. “If anything, it was more of a negative thing. I chose Neighbours because it is doing well overseas and it is one of the longest-running shows on television. I thought I would get more experience.” Annalise, a social butterfly with a penchant for men (age is not a consideration), causes a stir in Ramsay Street by befriending Lou Carpenter (Tom Oliver).

“She’s a bit naughty,” Kimberley says. “She hasn’t had a very good upbringing. Her father died when she was young and her mother had affairs with lots of men. I had a good idea of what went on at Neighbours because Scott had told me, and I knew a lot of the people through Scott.”

But there was one thing he failed to tell her. “I was so nervous on my first day,” she says. “That’s all I can remember about my first day – being nervous!”

Or This...?

Simone Robertson might only be 16, but she’s already acted a lifetime of experiences. Now, as the peril-plagued Phoebe Bright in Neighbours, she faces pregnancy alone after the death of her baby’s father (played by Kristian Schmid). But in coming months, motherhood and marriage make Phoebe’s life a little happier.

The final episode of Neighbours for 1992 showed Phoebe going into labour. The birth and Phoebe’s marriage to her new love Stephen (Lochie Daddo) will screen when Neighbours returns on January 11. For Simone, acting out a pregnancy was a dramatic challenge. “The whole thing was pretty strange,” she says. “I thought, being pregnant at my age is not the done thing. The birth was one of the hardest things I have had to do. When you have crying scenes, at least you can find an emotion because you have cried before, but having a baby was totally alien.”

To prepare, Simone saw videos of childbirth, but pulled out of a trip to hospital to see a real birth because she felt she “couldn’t cope”. Phoebe’s baby, Hope, is “played” by tiny Laura Pearson, who makes her soapie debut at the tender age of one week.

If the birth scenes were gruelling for Simone – she unintentionally hyperventilated during “labour” – they were weird for the baby’s real mother, Sharon Pearson, of Melbourne. “We just wanted to have Laura in Neighbours for the fun of it,” says Sharon. “It is a bit strange, though, watching someone else holding your baby and giving birth!”

This article originally appeared in TV Week magazine, dated 9th January 1993 and was written by Sandra McLean

Article submitted by Steve