 Despite building a formidable screen CV from 1971 on, Zoe Wanamaker had
her first taste of real fame in Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran's popular comic
drama Love Hurts (ITV, 1992-94), playing single career girl Tessa Piggott,
dumped by a lover who is also her boss and finding new opportunities working
for a charity before eventually, if reluctantly, falling for Adam Faith's
entrepreneur. The actress seems seldom out of work on stage or screen despite,
or because of her unconventional looks - part feline, part pixie, often topped
by short, spikey hair - and her low, husky, nicotine-drenched purr of a
voice.
She was born on 13 May 1949 in New York City to Jewish parents, her father
being the celebrated actor, director and tireless Globe Theatre campaigner Sam
Wanamaker, who was blacklisted in the 1950s, after which the whole family moved
to England. Her mother Charlotte was also an actress and radio star. Zoë was
privately educated in Hampstead, before attending a Quaker boarding school in
Somerset.
As an American in North London, she always felt slightly exotic but not
especially Jewish, since her parents were stolidly secular. Neither encouraged
her to pursue an acting career, so she studied painting and then ballet for a
time, finally opting to train at the Central School of Speech and Drama. She
came up through the repertory theatre system, and her stage work spans
Shakespeare, contemporary classics, musicals, even pantomime; she has performed
with both the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre.
She excels in comedy and has played several grotesques, notably Clarice, one of the dim-witted
twin sisters of Lord Groan in Gormenghast (BBC, 2000); eccentric crime writer
Ariadne Oliver in Agatha Christie Poirot (ITV, 2003-) and Madame Hooch in Harry
Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (US/UK, 2001) - and who could forget her
startling 'appearance' as Cassandra in two Doctor Who (BBC, 2005-) stories, reduced to a CGI face stretched across a piece of skin?
Her range, however, also embraces many small-screen versions of classic
theatre, as well as roles in significant TV drama, such as Edge of Darkness
(BBC, 1985), as intelligence agent Clementine; the ambitious but ultimately
disappointing Paradise Postponed (ITV, 1986), in which she played disturbed and
embittered Charlotte, who marries the loathsome Tory Leslie Titmuss; and the
first series of Prime Suspect (ITV, 1991), which won her a BAFTA nomination for
her performance as the surly and suspicious prostitute married to the prime
suspect himself. In recent years she has become best known for one of TV's
longest-running sitcoms, My Family (BBC, 2000-), playing bossy control freak
Susan Harper, long-suffering wife to Robert Lindsay's grumpy and sarcastic
dentist, Ben. She has won the Rose d'Or for the role.
She holds British and American citizenship, and was awarded a CBE in 2000.
She is involved with several charities, and oversaw the final stages of the
Globe Theatre project, following her father's death before its completion; she
spoke the first lines from the stage at the opening ceremony.
Janet Moat
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FILM & TV CREDITS
