Coronation Street Tommy Orpington star’s rival soap role and famous brother revealed
Coronation Street viewers know Matt Milburn for playing Weatherfield County footballer Tommy Orpington but that's not the only major soap role that the actor has had
Matt Milburn is making a splash in Coronation Street as footballer Tommy Orpington, who is at the centre of a juicy new affair storyline with Tracy McDonald.
He first appeared in the ITV soap as loveable Tommy in 2016 and has been in Weatherfield on and off since then. but TV fans have realised that it isn’t his first trip to soapland.
Plus they have been stunned to discover that Matt isn’t the only member of his family to find fame on the cobbles – with his brother Greg Wood starring in Corrie too. He plays ruthless loan shark Rick Neelan, who has popped up in almost 50 episodes of the ITV soap in the last 15 years.
Matt got his break in soap in 2003, when he bagged the part of fashion student Joe Spencer in Channel 4’s Hollyoaks. He was on the show until 2006, with his alter ego dating the likes of Jodie Nash and Sophie Burton.
Joe was popular with viewers but sadly his character met a nasty end. He lost his life when a fire broke out after an explosion at the Dog In The Pond, but showed his bravery until the end as he tried to save his friends.
After Hollyoaks, Matt went on to ITV’s Emmerdale. He played locum vet Nicky Pritchard in several episodes in 2011.
Meanwhile, his brother Greg has also been racking up the soap roles. As well as Corrie, he is known for playing Terry Gibson in Brookside, a part he had from 2002 until 2003.
He also did a couple of stints in Hollyoaks himself, once as the member of a jury and later as villain Trevor Royle. He was in the soap from 2013 until 2016, when Trevor was stabbed and killed by Nico Blake (Persephone Swales-Dawson) on his and Grace’s wedding day.
Matt recently shared that it was watching his brother act that gave him a taste for it himself. “I struggled from my late teens to early 20s to pin down exactly what I wanted to do,” he told TV Times. “I did a BTEC in Sports Science as I thought I wanted to be a PE teacher. Then I did A-Levels, and was about to do sports journalism at university when my first opportunity to act came along.”
He explained that Greg was due to be in a play with some friends at university but then couldn’t do it as he had bagged his Brookside role. So he suggested that his brother Matt fill in for him on stage.
Matt agreed to do it and when he did he realised that acting was the “best buzz”, so started to pursue an acting career too.