Australian The Bold And The Beautiful actress Ashleigh Brewer is pregnant with her first child.
The 35-year-old, who tied the knot with film producer Mark Bauch in December, confirmed her happy news as she showed off her blossoming baby bump for the first time. “Yes, I’m pregnant. Which is so exciting – I’m going into my third trimester now,” she told Stellar.
Opening up about how she’s managed to disguise her bump on the set of the long-running US daytime soap opera, the star revealed it’s been a “grounding experience”.
“I’m still working on the show, which has been, honestly, a dream. I won’t give away all the secrets, but we cover the bump,” she said.
“It’s been an interesting peek behind the curtain. Depending on the scene, I’ll either wear clothes that conceal my bump or I’ll hold a bag in front of me.
“But it’s funny, in between ‘action’ and ‘cut’, I really forget that I’m pregnant and then I’ll have a director whisper into my microphone, ‘Ashleigh, you’re just rubbing your tummy.’ It’s been such a grounding experience, actually.”
The former Neighbours favourite joined the cast of The Bold And The Beautiful as Ivy Forrester in 2014. While she departed the show in 2018, she reprised her role in 2024.
In the candid chat, the actress revealed that she developed an eating disorder at the age of 18.
“I was bulimic and also struggled with anorexia and a restrictive mindset,” she said. “It developed pretty quickly once I moved out of home to Melbourne and started working. In a weird way, my eating disorder was my best friend.”
Now five years into her recovery, she admits she’s feeling “really strong” amid her pregnancy.
“Where I’ve been and where I am now truly is night and day,” she said. “I’m so happy to be pregnant without also battling those voices and that darkness.
“The fact that I have five years and will continue to stack years of recovery away from my eating disorders means that my daughter also won’t be mirroring behaviours that are unhealed in me. The fact that I’m back on [The Bold And The Beautiful] and that opportunity came around again, and I get to walk onto set and be with people I adore, I just feel so lucky.
Ashleigh also admitted that she’s been “sober for three years, too”. “That was a part of my recovery journey,” she explained.
Revealing details of her wedding, Ashleigh said the couple had a lowkey courthouse ceremony in Santa Barbara at 2pm on a Thursday.
“We’d been engaged for two years but we couldn’t quite figure out how to do a wedding and where to do it,” she explained. “He’s English, I’m Australian and we live in Los Angeles. In the end, we organised the wedding in nine days. We had a date set at the Santa Barbara courthouse and we just committed to it.”
With only 10 guests allowed, they had to “pick our closest friends”, who were joined by Mark’s parents and Ashleigh’s mum, who flew in from Australia.
The bride wore a simple white silk dress, which “arrived in the mail two days before the wedding”.
“It was amazing,” she reflected. “I honestly wouldn’t want to do it any other way.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Ashleigh talked about her “incredible friendship group” of about 10 Aussies who have all been friends since they were teenagers. That includes H20: Just Add Water co-star Phoebe Tonkin and Neighbours and Barbie co-star Margot Robbie.
“Margot is literally king of the world right now, and rightfully so,” she enthused of her bestie. “I keep reading the quotes from Jacob Elordi [Margot’s Wuthering Heights co-star] doting on her and [talking about] how she is on set. When the world reacted to that, I didn’t think twice because I’ve been on set with Margot and she was that amazing when she was 18.
“I was, like, ‘I get it.’ I’m just so happy for all the success she’s experiencing because anyone who knew her on Neighbours [knew] she worked harder than anyone. Her work ethic is second to none. And if you can believe it, she’s even better than she appears or what people say in magazines. She’s just one in a bazillion, that woman.”
