ITV2 is a 24 hour, free-to-air entertainment television channel in the United Kingdom and the Channel Islands owned by ITV Digital Channels Ltd, a division of ITV plc. It was launched on 7 December 1998 and is available digitally via satellite, cable, IPTV and terrestrial (Freeview) platforms. For a number of years it had the largest audience share after the five analogue terrestrial stations, a claim now held by its sister service ITV3 both of which are freely available to a majority of households.
The channel is known for American programming such as Gossip Girl and The Vampire Diaries; repeats of recently aired episodes of soap operas and other entertainment programming from ITV1 such as Coronation Street and Emmerdale; spin-off shows such as The Xtra Factor and Britain's Got More Talent, and original programming such as Celebrity Juice and The Only Way Is Essex.
In the period between the launch of Independent Television in the 1950's and the start of Channel 4 and S4C in 1982, the term 'ITV2' was popularly used to refer to an envisioned second UK commercial television network.
Joseph Swash (born 20 January 1982 in Islington, London) is an English presenter and actor. He once played Mickey Miller in the British television soap opera EastEnders. He is the older brother of Shana Swash, who played his on-screen younger sister Demi Miller until July 2006. He also won the TV reality show I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! on 5 December 2008. He reprised his role as Mickey Miller for 2 episodes in order to coincide with his on-screen brother's departure.
Swash studied at Highbury Grove School in Islington, and attended Anna Scher Theatre School on the advice of his mother's friend, actress Linda Robson. Swash attended the school with Natalie Cassidy, James Alexandrou and Brooke Kinsella, with whom he later worked in the soap EastEnders.
When Swash was seven, he made his first TV appearance in an Andrex advertisement, and at the age of eleven he was cast in the movie The Adventures of Pinocchio,as The Fighting boy with Dawn French and Griff Rhys Jones and also co starring along side Jonathan Taylor Thomas Richard Claxton and Correy Carrier his character in it was a small part being one the boys who gets turned into a donkey from going on a Roller Coaster his character is known as Fighting Boy because he gets into a fight with Lampwick over a gun. He made minor appearances in several television series such as Casualty, The South Bank Show, The Bill and Nickelodeon's LOL: Laugh Out Loud. In 2002, Joe Swash appeared as a participant in the ITV documentary Club Reps, and on 8 November 2008 Joe and his family appeared in Family Fortunes. He also appeared with his sister on the CITV Saturday morning show Ministry Of Mayhem.
Nina Dobrev (born Nina Constantinova Dobreva; January 9, 1989) is a Bulgarian-born Canadian actress and model. She played the role of Mia Jones, the single teenage mother, on Degrassi: The Next Generation, from the show's sixth to ninth season. She currently stars as Elena Gilbert and Katherine Pierce on The CW television teen drama, The Vampire Diaries.
Nina Dobrev was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, and moved to Canada at the age of two, where she was raised in Toronto, Ontario. She speaks fluent French, English, and Bulgarian. She has an older brother, Alexander; her father is a computer specialist and her mother is an artist.
Dobrev attended J. B. Tyrrell Sr. Public School, where she started ballet and jazz classes, and competed in rhythmic gymnastic. Then, she attended and Wexford Collegiate School for the Arts in Scarborough, Ontario and Ryerson University in Toronto, majoring in sociology. She left in 2008 to pursue her acting career.
While working on the show, she began dating her Vampire Diaries co-star Ian Somerhalder.
Paul Wesley (Paweł Wasilewski, July 23, 1982) is an American actor best known for his roles as Stefan Salvatore in The CW TV series The Vampire Diaries and as Aaron Corbett in the ABC Family miniseries Fallen.
Wesley was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey to Polish parents Agnieszka and Thomas Wasilewski, and grew up in Marlboro Township, New Jersey. He has one older sister, Monika, and two younger sisters, Julia and Leah. In addition to English, he also knows Polish, having spent four months every year in Poland until the age of 16.
Wesley attended Christian Brothers Academy in Lincroft, New Jersey and Marlboro High School for a period during his high school years. During his junior year in high school, Wesley was cast in the soap opera Guiding Light as character Max Nickerson. He transferred from Marlboro High School to Lakewood Prep School in Howell, New Jersey because the school was able to accommodate his acting schedule. He graduated from there in 2000 and then started college at Rutgers University in New Jersey but left after one semester with his parents' support when more roles were offered to him, and he realized he could make a career out of acting.!
Ian Joseph Somerhalder (born December 8, 1978) is an American actor and model, best known for playing Boone Carlyle in the TV drama Lost and Damon Salvatore in the TV drama The Vampire Diaries.
Somerhalder was born and raised in Covington, Louisiana, the son of Edna, a massage therapist, and Robert Somerhalder, an independent building contractor. Raised Catholic, he attended St. Paul's, a private Catholic school in Covington. He embarked on a modeling career from age 10 to 13, and by the age of 17 he decided to go into acting.
In the summer of 2000, Somerhalder starred in the short-lived WB series Young Americans, a spin-off of Dawson's Creek. He played Hamilton Fleming, the son of the dean of a prestigious boarding school. In 2002, Somerhalder played bisexual character Paul Denton in Roger Avary's adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' novel, The Rules of Attraction, alongside James Van Der Beek, Shannyn Sossamon, and Jessica Biel.
In 2004, Somerhalder scored his breakthrough role when he played Boone Carlyle in the hit TV show Lost. Despite his character's death in the twentieth episode of the first season, Somerhalder returned to the role of Boone for seven more episodes between 2005 and 2010, including the series finale. Somerhalder was the first actor to be cast in a role for the series and the first character to die.