BBC - Strictly Come Dancing 2009 - Laila Rouass & Anton du Beke: Video and bios of the Strictly contestants

Laila and Anton

Laila's progress

Week 10: Waltz - 29 / 40, then in the dance-off with Ricky Groves and Erin Boag and was saved by the judges.
Week 9: Rumba - 22 / 40. Laila was injured during training but decided to dance. See our News Story for full details.
Week 8: Paso Doble - 30 / 40
Week 7: Viennese Waltz - 33 / 40
Week 6: Samba - 28 / 40
Week 5: Jive - 22 / 40
Week 4: Foxtrot - 34 / 40
Week 3: Quickstep - 30 / 40
Week 2 - Show 2: Cha Cha - 25 / 40
Week 2 - Show 1: Tango - 30 / 40

View our weekly scoreboards gallery to see where Laila was placed.

You can join our Message Board to discuss Laila's progress too. fandescd said: "Just want to add my support for Laila and Anton. It would be fantastic if after everything they made it to the final. Last Saturday I was very impressed with Laila for managing to do a pretty good dance with just 6 hours of training"

Watch clips

Week 10: Judges' comments

High point

"I thought you came out and did spectacularly well"

Low point

"Your posture wasn’t that good"

Laila Rouass

The stunning Laila Rouass first came to our attention for portraying the Jimmy Choo-obsessed, serial schemer Amber Gates in the ratings-topping ITV drama, Footballers' Wives. Swapping one smash hit for another, she’s most recently been seen in dinosaur drama Primeval, playing a character far removed from the reprehensible Amber: Sarah Page, a geeky Egyptologist.

Participating in Strictly is a ‘dream come true’ for Laila who is especially looking forward to wearing as many sparkly costumes and sensational hair styles as possible!

Laila’s father is Moroccan, her mother is Indian, and she's the eldest daughter of seven children. One of her sisters, Saeida lives in Oman where she works as a teacher. She has extended family living and working in London.

I’ll remember this experience for the rest of my life!

Laila Rouass

Laila began modelling when she was aged 17. But her big break came a year later when she was cast in a film called City of Dreams. In 2002 Laila swapped Bollywood for Hollywood, when she won a part in The Four Feathers, alongside Heath Ledger.

Laila’s Footballer’s Wives character, Amber, was a former Bollywood superstar. Her arch nemesis in the show was Tanya Turner - played by none other than Zoe Lucker!

Anton du Beke

Anton is eternally young and 5’11”. His professional partner is fellow Strictly dancer, Erin Boag. They have been dancing together for 11 years and turned professional in 2002. His speciality is Ballroom.

Anton grew up in Sevenoaks, Kent with his Spanish mother, Hungarian father, and his brother and sister. He started dancing at 14 - one evening he went to pick his sister up from her Ballroom class and saw all the wonderful girls taking part, and suddenly he swapped allegiance from football to dance!

Anton began dancing in school competitions very quickly after beginning lessons. He had a lot of ground to make up though, as by 14 most people were already experienced competitors on the junior circuit. Anton trained in both Ballroom and Latin until he was 17 when he gave up the Latin dancing.

After leaving school he worked as a baker, getting up at 3 am, working a full day and then practicing his dancing in the evening. After that he mainly worked in retail, but he always knew that the dancing was what he wanted to do.