Shane Richie

Shane Richie has had a rather winding if successful road to British soap cult status, as Alfie Moon on the hugely popular soap "EastEnders." Richie's earlier career, in the late 1980s into 1990, consisted of work on talk and variety shows, sketch comedies, and games shows, including as a guest and presenter on "Win, Lose or Draw! ." He's also had a very prosperous side career performing in musicals, including English productions of "Boogie Nights" and "Grease." His TV acting career was launched in earnest with a solid four-episode stint on the crime drama "Burnside" in 2000, followed in 2002 by his landing the Alfie role on "EastEnders," the iconic series that debuted in 1985. Richie's Alfie Moon became so popular a character that, after a five-year hiatus, between 2005 and 2010, he was finally brought back to join co-star Jessie Wallace as wife Kat Moon. Over the course of the break, Richie starred in the TV movie comedy "The Good Samaritan" in 2007, the revamped drama "Minder" in 2009, and graced the big screen in the boxing bio-drama "Risen," which premiered in 2010. As a singer, Richie performed the song ''We Have All the Time in the World'' for an episode of "EastEnders" that ran in mid-September of 2005, just a few months before his five-year sabbatical.