Bec Hewitt is back with a Barbie in tow

Eleven years after leaving Summer Bay, the Logie-winning actor and Dancing with the Stars champion is making her re-emergence in the spotlight with a Barbie in tow.

The mother-of-three is the doll's new Christmas ambassador, together with her youngest daughter, Ava, 6.

Hewitt, who quit Home and Away in 2005 when she became pregnant with her eldest daughter, Mia, has since flourished in her role as stay-at-home mum but is happy the family has found a permanent base in Melbourne where she decided to wait until the children settled into a new school before heading back to work.

"I'm settled now, the kids are all in school but I'm really nervous. It's been so many years since I've done talk shows and press," she told Fairfax Media. "But then I remembered this is what my kids have been doing for years, constantly moving and always being the new kids at school."

However, the star formerly known as Hayley Lawson isn't likely to reprise her role, confirming she hasn't been approached to return to the long-running soap.

"I love acting, but the hours are very long and I really want to be there for the kids," she said.

The Hewitts relocated from the Bahamas to Australia earlier this year for Lleyton to focus on his Davis Cup captaincy duties and to give the children more educational and extracurricular opportunities.

While Mia and Ava are following in their mother's footsteps of taking dancing, singing and acting lessons, the couple's son, Cruz, 7, is proving to be quite the sporting prodigy, adept at AFL, basketball and tennis.

"He's now taken to playing tennis on a Hoverboard as well as using his right and left hand to serve and backhand," Bec said.

Lleyton, who already has his hands full managing high-maintenance talent like Nick Kyrgios, doesn't conduct his son's regular tennis lessons.

Bec decided to sign on with Barbie due to the dolls ability to inspire the imagination of her kids, who have restricted access to other toys such as iPads at home.

"Ava ropes all of them into playing and thinking of all the jobs she [Barbie] can have. Last week she was a soccer player and a pilot."

Mattel has long been criticised for promoting unhealthy body images via the Barbie doll range, but this year the company has taken steps to be more inclusive and more diverse.

Earlier this year it released a range that features tall, petite and "curvy" dolls with different hair and skin colours, while earlier this month size 16 model Ashley Graham was immortalised in plastic. Her one design stipulation was that "her thighs touch".

Both Mattel and the Sports Illustrated star was inundated with fan mail after the launch.

"They're seeing somebody who appreciates the things about their own bodies that haven't been celebrated, like cellulite and back fat," Graham told New York Magazine. "These women never had a curvy role model growing up who not only looked like them but was also outspoken about what they go through."

Kayla Itsines' "army" may just be fitter than our SAS.

The Sweat With Kayla founder together her devout followers last week became the largest female fitness community in the world by setting five Guinness World Records.

Itsines, for those who aren't one of her 5.9 million followers on Instagram, is a 25-year-old fitness instructor and the most successful export out of Adelaide since Clare Valley riesling.

Together with more than 2200 of her fans, she cracked five records on Guiness World Records Day, an annual event that guarantees winners an official place in the following year's book.

The "army", a term social media coined for her followers via a group fitness class, are now the proud owners of records for "the most people to perform squats", "the most people doing sit-ups simultaneously", "the most people performing lunges", "the most people performing star jumps" and "the most people running in place simultaneously".

"Working as a team to not just achieve our fitness goals but also to break these records really proves that we are the largest and most influential fitness community in the world," Itsines said.

The records cap off a great year for Itsines.

Earlier this year she conducted sellout boot camps in the US and caught the attention of The New York Times.

"Ms Itsines' seemingly genuine could-be-any-girl image is tightly controlled. Between sales of her guides, her foam rollers, her water bottles and her recently released app, she's almost certainly much wealthier than your average 24-year-old (or your average anyone), but she won't confirm even how many employees her company has besides her and Mr Pearce [Itsine's fiance Tobi Pearce]," the story titled "Kayla Itsines Is Winning Instagram Followers, One Ab Post at a Time" stated.

Back home she made her debut on the BRW Young Rich list, only one of eight women to do so, thanks to the $46 million fitness and social media empire she created on the advice of Pearce back in 2014.

She also has taken steps to make her 28-minute high-intensity workout program, already road tested by 10 million women, more inclusive by ensuring the $69 "Bikini Body Guide" is focused on positive body image, health and movement.