Joe Simpson 'Ashlee's Melrose Axe Was No Loss'

Joe Simpson says Ashlee's Melrose axe was no loss'

Ashlee Simpson-Wentz's father has brushed off the star's sudden departurefrom hit U.S. TV show Melrose Place, insisting her axe was not a "loss".

The singeractress landed a role in the revamped version of the 1990s soap opera earlier this year (09), but it was announced in October (09) that her character Violet Foster would be written out of the series.

The tabloid press pounced on the news, portraying Simpson-Wentz's axe as a career failure - but her dad Joe Simpson has come to the defence of the 25 year old, claiming the media will attack his showbiz family whatever they do.

He tells Usmagazine.com, "We as a family are under a lot of pressure. (People want) to make us look bad and want us to fail. "(The Melrose Place axe) was never a loss.

The world says whatever it says. (The world), again, always want to make it look like we're failures but we're really just a family that works hard".

And the family patriarch is proud of the way Ashlee and her older sister Jessica Simpson deal with the harsh criticism "My children look at upsand downs and rise up above it all and remain strong...We're just normalpeople, and we always try to be who we say we are".

Simpson-Wentz has since bounced back from the acting disappointment by making her Broadway debut in Chicago as Roxie Hart, reprising the role she first played on London's West End in 2006.