Emma Fielding

Emma Georgina Annalies Fielding, born on 7 October 1970, is an English actress whose career has spanned stage, television, radio, and audio performance. The daughter of a British Army officer, she spent portions of her childhood across multiple countries, including Nigeria, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, and Northern Ireland, as well as in Malvern, where her family lived above a betting shop. She attended Berkhamsted Collegiate boarding school and, as a teenager, worked as an usherette at the Apollo Theatre in Oxford. Fielding initially pursued law at Cambridge University before leaving after two terms. She subsequently worked at a kibbutz in Israel and then trained as an actress at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.

Following her graduation, Fielding joined the Royal National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. She first drew critical attention in 1993, originating the role of Thomasina in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia at the National Theatre. That same year she played Agnes in The School for Wives at the Almeida Theatre, a performance for which she received the Ian Charleson Award in 1994. Her work in John Ford's The Broken Heart earned her the Dame Peggy Ashcroft Award for Best Actress. The Critics' Circle Theatre Award for Most Promising Newcomer was also presented to her in 1993, recognizing her performances in both Arcadia and The School for Wives.

Fielding received a Laurence Olivier Award nomination for Best Supporting Performance in 1999 for her role in The School for Scandal during the 1998 season. She was nominated again for a 2002 Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her performance in Private Lives at the Albery Theatre in London. That production subsequently transferred to Broadway, where Fielding made her Broadway debut in Noël Coward's Private Lives in 2002, earning a Theatre World Award for outstanding Broadway debut.

Beyond the stage, Fielding appeared in the BBC television mini-series Cranford and took on the role of Astrid Knight in the crime drama Death in Paradise, in Season 1, Episode 4. She appeared in Series 3, Episodes 17 and 18 of the crime drama DCI Banks in 2014, and joined the cast of EastEnders in 2018 as Ted Murray's daughter. In November 2018, she provided the voice of the alien Kisar in the Doctor Who episode "Demons of the Punjab." In 2009, she played Daisy opposite Timothy West in the BBC Radio 4 adaptation of John Mortimer's Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders. Her radio work for the BBC has also included playing Esme in Tom Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll, a role she additionally performed in the West End.

Fielding has narrated numerous audiobooks, including productions for Naxos Audiobooks such as Hamlet, Hedda Gabler, Jane Eyre, Lady Windermere's Fan, Othello, Rebecca, The Turn of the Screw, and Fanny Hill. For Random House Audio she narrated I Don't Know How She Does It and Longbourn. Her audiobook credits also include His Dark Materials as Mrs. Coulter, Vanity Fair as Rebecca Sharp Crawley, The Haunting of Hill House as the narrator, and Nick Hornby's Funny Girl as the narrator.