Elizabeth Rider

Elizabeth Rider is an English actress whose work spans stage, television, and voice performance. She trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where she received the institution's Gold Medal. Following her studies, she won the Carleton Hobbs Bursary, which secured her a six-month contract with the Radio Drama Company.

Rider made her Broadway appearance in 1983 in All's Well That Ends Well. Her television career began the same decade, with her first acting role on screen coming in 1979, when she played Nora in the series Testament of Youth. Over the following years she accumulated credits across a wide range of British television dramas, including Heartbeat, Emmerdale, Holby City, Hollyoaks, The Street, The Accused, The Tunnel, Call the Midwife, Marchlands, and Informer.

Among her more sustained television engagements, Rider portrayed Helen Braithwaite in Series Two and Three of At Home with the Braithwaites in 2001 and 2002. In 1997 she took on the role of Sheila Thwaite in The Lakes, and in 1999 she appeared in the ITV soap opera Coronation Street as Ashley Peacock's biological mother. A ten-episode arc as Jill Green in EastEnders followed in 2004, and she appeared in five episodes of Series 23 of Casualty as Cathy Malone. From 2009 to 2017, she held the recurring role of DCI Lynette Driver on the BBC soap opera Doctors. She also appeared in the 2013 Doctor Who Christmas Special, "The Time of the Doctor." Beyond live-action performance, Rider provided the voice of Atris in the video game Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords.