Harpenden teen stars in Toyota advert
Pollyanna Hope from Harpenden is starring in a new TV advert. - Credit: Pollyanna Hope
A 16-year-old amputee ballerina from Harpenden is starring in a new TV advert which launched yesterday.
The advert is the latest in Toyota’s Start Your Impossible campaign which celebrates the company’s partnership with the Olympic and Paralympic Games and communicates its mission to encourage mobility for all.
Pollyanna Hope's story was chosen as it shows how people can realise their potential and achieve their impossible. In 2007, when just two years old, she lost her leg in a bus crash that also claimed the life of her grandmother Elizabeth and left her mother Sarah with life changing injuries.
Since that day Pollyanna has undergone around 20 surgical procedures and used 25 different prosthetic legs, many provided by the NHS, as she has grown up. Her injury notwithstanding, Pollyanna has become a ballet dancer and now uses a new special prosthetic leg made for her by Dorset Orthopaedic fixed in the en pointe position that enables her to dance alongside able-bodied ballerinas.
Pollyanna has overcome many difficulties to achieve her dream to be a dancer and is currently looking to start using a new NHS lightweight leg that will help her progress with her dancing. She trains at the London Contemporary Dance School with the CAT (Contemporary Advanced Training) scheme and has been a dancer in the English National Ballet Youth Company since September 2021.
The advert shows people in a new way and how mobility products help them to move. The action shifts to a ballet class, with several girls frozen in mid-move. The camera then reveals Pollyanna Hope with her prosthetic leg.
Pollyanna said: “It was brilliant fun to travel to Slovenia to film the advert. I enjoyed meeting so many new people and I loved doing the voiceover too. I am delighted to be part of the ‘Beautiful Movement’ advert and I can’t wait for my friends and family to see it.”
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She explained how she uses different prosthetic legs for different activities: “Dorset Orthopaedic made a special ‘en pointe’ ballet prosthesis for me. I have a walking leg for normal walking and a blade for running that I also use for dance. I am getting a new activity leg too. I hope to be able to dance on it, as well as walk so I do not have to carry so many legs around with me.”
