A pint is raised toward the camera, a cigarette poised between manicured fingers, and beneath a sweep of platinum blonde hair a never-before-seen 19-year-old Maura Higgins fixes the lens with magnificent self-possession.
Standing between her protective older brother Jamie and one of his friends, she wears a tiny black dress with a silver satin panel. Even through the hard flash of a pocket camera, Maura is unmistakably the focus.
The images, taken in 2010 during one of many nights spent with Jamie and his friends around the St Matthew’s estate in Ballymahon, could hardly be further removed from the Maura that America now knows.
Sixteen years on, the peroxide has been swapped for glossy brunette and the local nights out have given way to red carpets.
For this young local girl from County Longford, Ireland, is currently the toast of Los Angeles, having relaunched herself as a glossy television star for a US audience.
Last week 6.7 million viewers tuned in to watch her dance the foxtrot on Dancing With The Stars with professional partner Mark Ballas in a glamorous, gothic routine.
With a cigarette poised between manicured fingers, a 19-year-old Maura Higgins sports a side-swept fringe of platinum blonde hair as she stands with her brother Jamie
Maura, second from right, stands in towering heels with one leg kicked out behind her in the exclusive pictures obtained by the Daily Mail
Maura wears a black dress with a silver satin panel in never-before-seen pictures from her youth in Ballymahon, Ireland
The reality TV star is the youngest of four children and left school at 16 to train as a hairdresser
Now, exclusive pictures obtained by the Daily Mail – from those who knew her growing up in Ballymahon – lay bare her dramatic transformation and the true extent of Maura’s unbelievable reinvention.
Taken over several years, they capture Maura drinking, smoking and partying with the friends who knew her first.
‘All the lads fancied her and she knew it,’ one local in a Ballymahon vape shop said. ‘Her brother was protective because she always attracted attention wherever they went, even then, but Maura did not need anybody to fight her battles.
‘She was very funny, very flirty and always got what she wanted. She loved being the little sister among Jamie’s friends because she could wind them up and give them cheek.’
The St Matthew’s estate, the resident recalled, was a self-contained little world in which teenagers drifted in and out of one another’s homes, piling into living rooms around box televisions with music playing and cheap drinks from the off-licence.
The pictures came not from a smartphone but a tiny digital camera, its hard flash preserving the checked shirts and side-swept fringes of 2010 in all their glory.
Such house parties were a speciality, locals said, but so too were the weekly discos.
One woman whose cousin grew up alongside her affectionately claimed Maura held ‘the record for the most kissing’ among the group.
‘Maura was at the discos all the time,’ she said. ‘She was wild, mad and great fun even then. They would dance, kiss boys and then head off into a field from the estate afterwards.’
It is the sort of local legend that survives where everybody knows everybody else – and where Maura used to joke there were only three streets and the entire town knew her business.
Officially, Ballymahon has rather more than three streets, but not by much. Set beside the River Inny in County Longford, 12 miles from Athlone, it had a population of just 1,714 at the 2022 census.
On Ballymahon’s rain-slicked main street last week, the Daily Mail retraced Maura’s route from the low, cream-painted bungalow where her mother still lives – set amid clipped hedges, flowering shrubs and an immaculate lawn – to the shops, salons and pubs where she grew up.
The pictures – from those who knew her growing up in Ballymahon – lay bare Maura’s dramatic transformation and the true extent of her unbelievable reinvention
The pictures came not from a smartphone but a tiny digital camera, its hard flash preserving the checked shirts and side-swept fringes of 2010 in all their glory
An old photo-booth picture shows Maura in a white masquerade mask, crowded into the photo alongside her mother Sharon and sisters Louise and Becki
A raven-haired Maura wears red lipstick as she leans into one of her brother’s friends at a nightclub back in 2014, with one hand resting against his checked shirt
Over several hours, across shop counters and beside salon washbasins, the same portrait emerged: Maura’s success had astonished nobody who knew her before it.
Almost every mention of the town’s most famous daughter brought a smile of recognition, with one local saying: ‘America’s only finding out now what we’ve known for years – she’s a star.’
At Skelly’s, a family-run Main Street pub established in 1850, an open fire, cosy alcoves and hidden nooks preserve the warmth of old Ballymahon. Residents repeatedly called it ‘the heart of Ballymahon’ and remembered it as Maura’s favourite haunt.
‘Sure, this was her favourite place,’ one regular said. ‘She was in here all the time, just all the time. We haven’t seen her for years, but we are all rooting for her. She will absolutely smash America.’
Another added: ‘She always talked about getting out and seeing more of the world, but she never behaved like she was better than anybody here. That is why Ballymahon is so proud of her.’
Maura, 35, the youngest of Sharon and Seamus Higgins’s four children, attended Forgney National School and Ballymahon Vocational School before leaving at 16 to train as a hairdresser, sweeping floors, making coffee and graduating to the occasional blow-dry.
Caithriona Egan, who trained her at Occasions hair salon, remembers an apprentice whose comic timing was as sharp as her scissors.
‘She was a very, very good hairdresser – and so, so funny,’ she said. ‘A total character. You always knew there was something about her. She was never going to stay quiet, that one. She never did stay quiet here.’
Maura later moved across the road to Halo Hair Design, where the hours fitted around her burgeoning modelling career.
An online call for Monster Energy promotional girls opened a world beyond Ballymahon; she won a place and eventually left hairdressing to travel with the brand, sometimes taking nine flights in a week.
Work as a ring girl and motor-racing grid girl followed, along with an appearance in Liam Payne and Zedd’s 2017 video for Get Low. By the time Love Island called in 2019, she had some 40,000 Instagram followers, although she told her mother she expected to be home within a week.
Instead, her arrival detonated the fifth series. Her undiluted Longford vowels, sexual confidence and refusal to be embarrassed made her its breakout star.
Maura wears a hot-pink satin mini dress – as polished as any celebrity at a premiere – as she is sat alongside relatives Cathal, Katie and Kayla, in another of the pictures uncovered by the Daily Mail
The unearthed images capture Maura drinking, smoking and partying with the friends who knew her first back in Ireland
Maura used to joke there were only three streets in Ballymahon and the entire town knew her business. Ballymahon is set beside the River Inny in County Longford
Caithriona Egan, who trained Maura at Occasions hair salon, said she ‘was a very, very good hairdresser – and so, so funny’
She finished fourth with dancer Curtis Pritchard, 30, but left with 1.5 million new followers and ‘fanny flutters’ lodged permanently in the reality-television lexicon.
The old photographs suggest none of this was invented for television. In another softly lit nightclub frame taken in 2014, the platinum streak is gone and Maura, now raven-haired and immaculate in black lace and berry-red lipstick, leans into another of her brother’s friends, with one hand resting against his checked shirt.
As one local put it: ‘She was not simply the younger sister allowed to tag along, but firmly part of the gang.’
Others capture the evolution of her hometown glamour: friends lined up in fitted black dresses; Maura in towering heels with one leg kicked behind her; and a photo-booth picture in which she peers through a white masquerade mask, crowded into the frame with her mother Sharon and sisters Louise and Becki.
Later, she is pictured in a hot-pink satin mini dress – alongside relatives Cathal, Katie and Kayla – as polished as any celebrity at a premiere but squeezed happily around a pub table beside pints, handbags and phones.
Yet while Maura may arrive home with a famous boyfriend or designer wardrobe, Ballymahon refuses to be impressed by the performance of fame.
That was evident at Christmas 2024, when she brought former Strictly contestant Pete Wicks, 37, to nearby Glasson Lakehouse, a luxury hotel and golf resort on the shores of Lough Ree.
Approached along a sweeping avenue of ancient beech trees, the secluded retreat sits amid manicured grounds overlooking the water. The couple stayed in one of its three Lakeview Suites – complete with a separate sitting room, fireplace and broad balcony – which then cost around €600 (£514) a night.
‘Pete was the loud one,’ a barman at the hotel recalled. ‘You always knew when he was in the room.
‘He seemed very proud to be with her, like he couldn’t quite believe his luck. He was a bit more showy, and Maura isn’t like that.’
Her ascent has nevertheless been formidable. In January, she joined Hollywood’s elite at the Golden Globes in Beverly Hills, wearing an off-the-shoulder black gown by Marmar Halim, its sculptural gold-foil sleeves billowing around her as she swept along the red carpet.
She has also walked the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit runway in Miami and made history as the first contestant from the UK edition to cross into Love Island USA in a hosting role, fronting Aftersun.
Throwback images of the star have previously revealed her dramatic transformation since one of her school photos where she had a long fringe
The Love Island star’s ascent has been formidable – as last week 6.7 million viewers tuned in to watch her dance the foxtrot on Dancing With The Stars
She and professional partner Mark Ballas scored 21 points for their foxtrot to Alannah Myles’s Black Velvet on Wednesday
Earlier this year, she was runner-up on The Traitors US, where she met Ballas, 40. She will also co-host Peacock’s forthcoming Get Me Out of Here – an American reboot of ITV’s I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! – alongside the programme’s winner, Rob Rausch, 28.
On Wednesday, the former Ballymahon hairdresser scored 21 points for a foxtrot to Alannah Myles’s Black Velvet with Ballas, earning sevens from Carrie Ann Inaba, Derek Hough and Bruno Tonioli. It left her joint top and leading the female contestants – an extraordinary US primetime debut for a woman who insists she has never danced before.
Back home, the time difference has proved no obstacle. Egan said the salon staff were following ‘every step,’ even if it meant catching up the following morning.
Sharon, repeatedly described around town as a ‘beaming mammy,’ had travelled to America to watch her youngest daughter in person.
‘She’ll always be Maura from Ballymahon to us,’ said one local in the town’s SuperValu grocery shop. ‘America can have her for now, but we want her back.
‘She could be on American television one night and sitting in here with her mammy the next, and nobody would bat an eyelid.’
Outside Sizzle School of Dance, where the town’s young girls practise their own routines, an elderly resident imagined them watching Maura beneath the lights of a Los Angeles ballroom and daring to picture a larger life.
‘You can see them twirling around in their dresses, dreaming of being on the telly in LA,’ she said.
They could scarcely have a more fitting example. For long before America learnt her name, Ballymahon had already seen Maura command a disco dance floor, charm a room and enjoy a party.
The dresses are more expensive now, the cameras infinitely kinder and the pints have been replaced by a glitterball campaign – but that look into the lens has not altered at all.
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