Chelsee Healey's daughter targeted by online trolls

Chelsee Healey's five-year-old daughter has been subjected to racist abuse online.

The 'Hollyoaks' actress finds it "heartbreaking" when trolls focus their attention on her little girl Coco - who she has with former partner Jack Malloy - but she refuses to get drawn into a war of words with the bullies.

She told the Daily Star Sunday newspaper: “My daughter gets sent racist abuse through ­social media.

“I’ve been sent a lot of messages about Coco. When it’s about an innocent child it’s not nice. It’s heartbreaking. But I try not to reply back. I don’t entertain it.”

The 33-year-old star admitted she's been a target for trolls for years, with things getting particularly bad when she took part in 'Strictly Come Dancing' in 2011, on which she came second with partner Pasha Kovalev.

She said: “When I was on 'Strictly', I got a lot of hate. It’s such a big show – that was the first time a lot of people had seen me. I got called ‘hippo’ and things like that.

“I’m quite thick-skinned. But when they send stuff about your child it’s a completely different ballgame.

“If they go out of their way to say something nasty about someone, then they are the ones with the problem.”

Chelsee no longer searches online to find out what people have been saying about her because there is "always" some "nasty stuff".

She said: “I don’t go searching for comments about TV shows I’m doing anymore. If I get nice tweets, that’s really lovely.

“But I don’t search because you’ll always find nasty stuff.”

The actress is thankful for the supportive atmosphere on 'Hollyoaks' when she's dealing with the online abuse.

She said: “We have a cast liaison rep who we can speak to whenever we need it. And as a cast, we support each other. We are really close.

“If someone is having a s*** day, the ­others will notice it and help them.”