After finding huge success as a soap actress and pop star, Holly Valance’s new focus sprouting her views supporting the far-right has left many baffled.
In 1999, the Australian actress burst onto our screens aged 16 as the feisty Felicity ‘Flick’ Scully, a devoted feminist with an active social conscience.
Leaving Ramsay Street after three years, Valance went on to carve out a career as a hugely successful singer – with her debut album Footprints being released in 2002 and including hits such as Kiss Kiss, Down Boy and Naughty Girl. She followed that up with her second and final album, State of Mind, the following year.
Over the next decade she appeared in shows including the CSI franchise, Entourage and Prison Break, as well as in the 2008 film Taken and on Strictly Come Dancing three years later.
But in 2013 she largely disappeared from the public eye, choosing to focus on her growing family with billionaire British property developer Nick Candy, whom she’d married a year prior. The event cost an estimated £3million and even featured a performance from Katy Perry.
That was until four years ago, when she and her husband were pictured with Reform UK founder Nigel Farage and US President Donald Trump, with the former sharing on X the group had just enjoyed a ‘great dinner at Mar-a-Lago!’.
The backlash came swiftly. Many people immediately vowed to boycott Valance’s music after discovering her political persuasion.
Then, two years later she was interviewed on GB News, where she didn’t hold back sharing her thoughts on a range of topics.
At the time she labelled Greta Thunberg a ‘demonic little gremlin high priestess of climatism’, said there was ‘no climate crisis’ and took aim at her country of birth – declaring that ‘the woke stuff’s really gone big in Australia’.
In one particularly stunning interview, she declared: ‘I would say that everyone starts off as a leftie and then wakes up at some point after making money, working, trying to run a business, trying to buy a home, then realises what crap ideas they all are, and then you go the right.’
Soon after she defended herself when speaking to The Times, explaining the decision to go public with her divisive views – including her passionate support for Reform. ‘It was a funny sliding doors moment because I didn’t think anything I said was particularly edgy or profound or revolutionary. But maybe it was a good moment for someone in the entertainment industry to buck the trend of only contributing their latest project pitch or their pronouns,’ she told the publication.
In recent months she’s also come under fire after being spotted with Tommy Robinson, the founder of the English Defence League, attending his Unite the Kingdom march in London. Posing in a MEGA (Make England Great Again) hat, she told The Daily Telegraph Australia: ‘I’m very proud and pleased of Tommy – this is his redemption.’
Last month she also released a controversial song with Australia’s One Nation party leader Pauline Hanson. Kiss Kiss (XX) My Arse – no doubt a reference to her 2002 single Kiss Kiss, a UK number one hit – t ok aim at cancel culture, ‘woke’ ideology and virtue signalling, opening with the lyrics proclaiming: ‘You will respect my pronouns.’
Then, last week, she was reprimanded for using an ableist slur on GB News but refused to back down when the host made an apology for her language.
Although many public figures are reticent about sharing their political leanings with the world – Valance, 42, has only become more vocal – with no signs of backing down.
Detailing Valance’s astonishing rise as a far-right spokesperson, Borne Media director Denise Palmer-Davies said sharing her views had been ‘massively damaging’ to her brand.
‘After [sharing her views for the first time] there was no going back, and I think she thought “to hell with it now. I may as well use my status as a figure to promote my beliefs and help what I believe in”,’ she said of the former actress and singer.
‘Her situation is a textbook example of how the lines between entertainment, politics, and personal brand have become almost impossible to separate. Audiences no longer view celebrities purely through the lens of their creative work, they view them as a values-driven brand. By publicly aligning herself with Farage, Trump, and now collaborating with Hanson, Holly has made a very deliberate positioning choice, and that inevitably is going to narrow her commercial audience,’ she added.
Although Palmer-Davies believes its unlikely Valance has plans to stage a comeback in the entertainment industry, if she ever did people would feel ‘incredibly nervous and wary’. ‘She’s now established niche followers who are very right-wing. But for the masses, she’s literally going to have people not wanting to touch her with a barge pole,’ she said.
Despite this, the fact Valance – who has a net worth of £15.7million herself – is apparently unlikely to be worried about any additional pushback or loss of income due to her already established wealth.
‘I think a lot of people are now starting to look at her as a bit of a poster girl…and I think she’s happy to be that for the far right.’
Speaking on a possible career comeback for Valance, Palmer-Davies explained: ‘Never say never, but I think she’s gone too far now. There would be a massive U-turn that she would have to do. However, until that narrative shifts, any traditional comeback will be fighting against the weight of her own headlines.’
In 2024, The Guardian described Valance as having ‘rapidly risen to become radical-right royalty’.
She’s also regularly thrown her support behind Farage, who she once said was referred to as ‘Uncle Nigel’ by her two teenage daughters, also donating £100,000 to his party. It was previously reported that she’d once also considered standing for Reform in the Essex constituency of Basildon and Billericay.
She also once described Trump as ‘fabulous’ and ‘extremely gentlemanly.’
Valance moved to London when she was 18, before relocating to Los Angeles. She then returned to London to live with Candy after they met at a dinner party. Although Candy previously donated £290,000 to the Conservative party, in 2024 he resigned his membership from the party and became the treasurer for Reform.
In June last year it was announced that Valance and her husband – worth an estimated £1.5billion – had split. News of the marriage breakdown was confirmed by a source – who said the couple were ‘keeping things private out of respect for their family’.
Her anti-immigration views are somewhat ironic given that she – a daughter of a British mother and Serbian father – has also been living in the UK for years.
In the past her own family have even tried to distance themselves from her contentious statements – with younger sister, and fellow actress, Olympia Valance previously saying on an Australian radio show: ‘Oh God! Everyone’s going to think that that’s what I think! And I don’t … that’s not my opinion on anything.’
When Valance was once probed during an interview about ‘coming out as a right winger’, she defiantly declared: ‘Now I’m just like living this far-right thug life, you know what I’m saying?.’
Though she went on to say that being labelled ‘far right’ was a ‘lazy attempt to slander anybody with reasonable views on incredibly dangerous levels of illegal immigration’.
Although she’s shut down rumours of a political run anytime soon, she’s previously explained: ‘If at some point over the next five years that becomes more realistic then I’d revisit that but right now I’m just supporting from the sidelines.’
Despite once being considered a soap sweetheart, Valance’s rise as a far-right supporter now looks likely to have irrevocably changed her public profile – with her polarising views providing a huge roadblock to any career resurrection down the line.
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