Alicya Eyo (born 16 December 1975) is an English actress, best known for her roles as Denny Blood in the ITV prison drama series Bad Girls and Ruby Haswell in the ITV soap opera Emmerdale. Early life Eyo was born on 16 December 1975 in Huyton, Merseyside. Her mother, Sue, is a jazz singer. She grew up in the Toxteth area of Liverpool. Her love of drama started when she was nine, and she attended drama and dance classes every Saturday. When she was 14, she moved to London with her family. She trained at the Courtyard Theatre School. Career Early career Eyo's first television appearance was in 1997, in Casualty, which was filmed earlier. She also made an appearance on Hetty Wainthropp Investigates and appeared in Gold the follow up drama series to Band Of Gold as a young prostitute involved with Yardie gangsters who come over to Bradfords red light district from Leeds to clear up the Lane. In 1999, Eyo appeared with Goldie in the David Bowie film Everybody Loves Sunshine known as B.U.S.T.E.D., internationally. She also starred in the movie G:MT - Greenwich Mean Time. However, Eyo's big break came in 1998 when she was offered the part of Denny Blood, in Bad Girls. The series was broadcast in June the following year when the UK viewing public first saw Eyo as Denny Blood in a pink PVC suit dancing to the N-Trance remix of Stayin' Alive by the Bee Gees. Bad Girls At the end of the sixth series (in which Eyo did not appear), the character of Denny Blood was voted the sixth favourite inmate on Bad Girls: Most Wanted. Denny's tragic upbringing, lead to the touching and tragic storylines with her mother, Jessie Devlin (played by Denise Black), and the relationship with stand-in mother Yvonne Atkins (Linda Henry). Blood also met the love of her life Shaz Wiley (Lindsey Fawcett), who died at the end of Series 4. Denny was devastated but found comfort in painting and was last seen being transferred to an open prison to serve the rest of her sentence. Just before Bad Girls was axed, the Bad Girls''' creators were going to ask Eyo to reprise her role as Denny. During this time, Eyo also appeared in the film The Low Down, in an episode of Urban Gothic and in Tube Tales. Since leaving Bad Girls, Eyo appeared in