Samantha Bond

Samantha Jane Bond, born on 27 November 1961 in London, England, is an English actress whose career spans stage, television, and film across more than four decades. The daughter of actor Philip Bond and television producer Pat Sandys, she grew up in Barnes and St Margarets in the London area and is the sister of actress Abigail Bond and journalist Matthew Bond. Her paternal grandparents were Welsh. She received her formal training at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School after attending the Godolphin and Latymer School.

Bond's professional acting career began at age 21 with the original stage production of Daisy Pulls It Off, Denise Deegan's play set in a girls' school, which opened at Southampton's Nuffield Theatre in 1983. That same year she made her earliest television appearances, portraying Maria Rushworth in the BBC miniseries adaptation of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park and originating the role of Rumpole's pupil "Miz Liz" Probert in the fourth series of Rumpole of the Bailey. In 1985, she appeared as Julia Simmons in the BBC's televised adaptation of Agatha Christie's A Murder Is Announced, part of the Miss Marple series.

A member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Bond began her work with the RSC in 1987, performing in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Hero and Leander, and Lorca's Women. In 1992, the company cast her as Rosalind in As You Like It and as Hermione in The Winter's Tale, both performed at the RSC's Stratford-upon-Avon and London theatres. She continued touring with the RSC as Hermione in 1993. Later RSC credits include Hippolyta and Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream in 2001.

Bond starred as the title character in the Royal National Theatre's West End production of David Hare's Amy's View opposite Judi Dench in 1997 and into early 1998. Later in 1998 she appeared in Shelagh Stephenson's The Memory of Water in the West End. In 1999, Bond and Dench reprised their respective roles in Amy's View for a limited Broadway run at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. Bond received a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her performance, while Dench won the Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Play. David Hare received a special citation from the New York Drama Critics' Circle for the production. Bond subsequently made her directorial debut in 2000 on a short touring production of The Memory of Water, the same year the play won an Olivier Award for Best New Comedy.

Her stage work in the 2000s included Donald Margulies's Pulitzer Prize-winning Dinner with Friends in 2001, in which she played Karen opposite Elizabeth McGovern, directed by McGovern's husband Simon Curtis; The Vagina Monologues in 2002; and Shakespeare's Macbeth on tour in 2002 and 2003, in which she played Lady Macbeth opposite Sean Bean in the title role. Additional stage credits include Oscar Wilde's A Woman of No Importance in 2003, The Rubenstein Kiss in 2005, Michael Frayn's Donkey's Years at London's Comedy Theatre in 2006, and a West End revival of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia at the Duke of York's Theatre in 2009, in which she played Hannah. In 2010 and 2011, she appeared as Mrs. Cheveley in Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband opposite her husband, actor Alexander Hanson, who played Mr. Cheveley. She played Nell in Peter Nichols's Passion Play in 2013 and took on the role of Muriel Eubanks in the West End musical Dirty Rotten Scoundrels in 2014. In October and November 2017, Bond appeared in the English-language premiere of Florian Zeller's The Lie at the Menier Chocolate Factory, again alongside Hanson.

On television, Bond is perhaps most widely recognized for playing Miss Moneypenny, M's secretary at MI6, in four James Bond films during the Pierce Brosnan era: GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough, and Die Another Day, from 1995 to 2002. In a BBC interview, Bond stated she retired from the role when Brosnan stepped down as the lead. She also portrayed the wealthy widow Lady Rosamund Painswick, sister of Robert Crawley the Earl of Grantham, in ITV's Downton Abbey from 2010 through 2015, appearing in 18 episodes across the series. From 2007 to 2014, she held a recurring role as Auntie Angela in the BBC semi-improvised comedy series Outnumbered alongside Hugh Dennis, Claire Skinner, and David Ryall. She played the villain Mrs. Wormwood in the pilot episode of the CBBC Doctor Who spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures in 2007 and returned to the role in the two-part second-series finale, Enemy of the Bane.

Earlier television work includes the 1989 adaptation of Oswald Wynd's The Ginger Tree, in which she starred as Mary MacKenzie; a 1990 episode of Agatha Christie's Poirot on ITV; a 1992 episode of Inspector Morse; a 1995 BBC anthology episode of Ghosts; and the 1996 television film Jane Austen's Emma, a Meridian-ITV/A&E production in which she portrayed Mrs. Weston alongside Kate Beckinsale as Emma. She co-starred with Peter Davison in the 2004 ITV drama-comedy Distant Shores, playing one half of a married couple who relocate to a remote island. Bond also appeared in three episodes of Midsomer Murders: Destroying Angel in 2001, Shot at Dawn in 2008, and Death in the Slow Lane in 2011. She appeared in the ITV series Home Fires, which premiered in the UK in 2015, as Frances Barden, a woman working to keep her village's Women's Institute operating during the early days of World War II. In film, she appeared alongside Tim Robbins in the 1989 independent fantasy film Erik the Viking.