Kate Ritchie has been an Australian actor, singer/songwriter, children’s book writer and radio presenter, she is best known for her role as supporting character Sally Foley on the popular television soap opera Home and Away. She has also spent considerable time as a writer and producer on television shows such as Dragons’ Den, Scrubs and Chuck. She has also spent some time working in the animation industry. She is of British origin, originally from Christchurch, New Zealand. Ritchie’s career has spanned parts of four decades, starting when she was a teenager working as a mail carrier in her spare time, later she began performing on stage and TV, and in turn progressed to roles in movies and music videos.
From a professional point of view, Kate Ritchie has been successful in various areas of acting, writing and producing, but is best known for her status as a singer, with a stage career that peaked with the singles She Loves Me and Something About The Way That You Look, from the Video Music Awards in 2021. From this period, Kate has gone on to have successful solo careers, with singles such as Take That, Don’t Talk To Anyone and Don’t Think About It topping the chart in Australia and around the world. However, since then her singing career has seen some stagnation, possibly as a result of her height difference, as she has often been compared to former teenage starlets such as Victoria Beckham.
Kate Ritchie’s height difference and career choices have been heavily scrutinised in the press and by colleagues in the entertainment industry. The critical reports have focused on her appearance, with some media reports saying that she is, in fact, a “short” female. Onstage, Ritchie often wears a short dress, with or without stiletto heels. In one documentary, it was stated that Ritchie would not mind if she was no taller than David Bowie, and that the Queen song She is Never Ever Getting Back Her Boyfriend was about her and that she would never get back with her boyfriend, because he was shorter than her. Some have argued that these claims are cruel and inflammatory, and that there is absolutely no glamour involved in being short.