Zoë Wanamaker CBE (born 13 May 1949) is an award-winning English-American actress best known for her role as Susan Harper in the British television series My Family.

Biography

Personal life

Wanamaker was born in New York City, the daughter of Charlotte Holland, an actress and radio performer, and actor/director/producer Sam Wanamaker, who left the United States for England after being blacklisted in 1952. She has a sister, Abby. Wanamaker is Jewish, with her family having originated in Odessa and Russia. She holds both American and British citizenship, having become a British Citizen in 2000, specifically so that she would receive a CBE from the Queen at Buckingham Palace rather than an honorary decoration from the British Foreign Secretary. In November 1994, she married the Irish actor and dramatist Gawn Grainger.

Education

According to Who's Who on Television (1982 edition), Wanamaker was educated at the independent King Alfred School in Hampstead, London and at Sidcot School, a Quaker boarding school in Somerset. She studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama.

Career

She played Madam Hooch in the film Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

She played Clarice, one of the dimwitted twin sisters of Lord Groan in Gormenghast, a BBC television adaptation of Mervyn Peake's trilogy. She has also appeared in a variety of films, programmes, and plays. Successful television series have included Love Hurts with Adam Faith.

Her stage performance in Sophocles' Electra, for which she won an Olivier Award, was widely acclaimed. She had previously won an Olivier Award in 1979, for her performance in Once In a Lifetime. Wanamaker voiced a CGI character named Lady Cassandra in the Doctor Who episode "The End of the World" (2005), and reprised the role (also appearing in the flesh this time) in the episode "New Earth".

She appeared on stage playing the part of Beatrice opposite Simon Russell Beale as Benedick in the National Theatre's production of Much Ado About Nothing.

Filmography

• Inside the Third Reich (1982) (TV)
• Edge of Darkness (1985) (TV)
• Paradise Postponed (1985) (TV)
• Prime Suspect (1991) (TV)
• The Countess Alice (1992) (TV)
• Love Hurts (1992-94) (TV)
• Wilde (1997)
• Swept from the Sea (1997)
• The Magical Legend of the Leprechauns (1998)
• David Copperfield (1999) (TV)
• Gormenghast (2000) (TV)
• My Family (2000–present) (TV)
• Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years (2001) (TV)
• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001)
• Five Children and It (2004)
• Britain's Best Sitcom (2004) (TV) (narrator)
• Marple: A Murder is Announced (2005) (TV)
• Doctor Who: "The End of the World" (2005) and "New Earth" (2006)
• Agatha Christie's Poirot "Cards on the Table" (2005) (TV)
• Johnny and the Bomb (2006)
• Agatha Christie's Poirot "Mrs. McGinty's Dead" (2008) (TV)
• Agatha Christie's Poirot "Third Girl" (2008) (TV)

References

External links

• Zoë Wanamaker at the Internet Movie Database
• Controversy over payment for Harry Potter film Guardian Unlimited article
• Zoë Wanamaker - Downstage Center interview at American Theatre Wing.org
• Actors On Performing Working in the Theatre seminar video at American Theatre Wing, April 2006
• Zoe Wanamaker interviewed by Beth Stevens about Awake and Sing! on Broadway.com