Samuel Anderson

Samuel Anderson is an English actor born in 1982 in Handsworth, Birmingham, to an Irish mother and a Jamaican father. From an early age he was determined to pursue a career in acting, and he attended Stuart Bathurst, a Catholic secondary school, before training at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts in London.

Anderson's professional career took shape around the National Theatre's 2004 production of Alan Bennett's The History Boys, in which he originated the role of Crowther. He went on to reprise that role across multiple productions of the play, including the Broadway run in 2006, as well as productions in Sydney, Wellington, and Hong Kong, in addition to radio and film versions of the work. The 2006 film adaptation featured the same stage cast, with Anderson again playing Crowther.

His television work began during the same period, with appearances in the Sky One drama Hex and the Channel 4 series Totally Frank between 2004 and 2007. In 2007 he joined the BBC Three comedy Gavin & Stacey as the recurring character Fingers, a role he returned to in 2009 and again in the show's 2024 Christmas special. That same year he began a run on the ITV1 soap opera Emmerdale, playing Ross Kirk from October 2007 until January 2009. His character's storylines included an affair with Donna Windsor-Dingle and a wrongful imprisonment for the murder of Shane Doyle. He has also made guest appearances in the BBC One series Doctors and Casualty, appeared in the BBC Four comedy film Stuck, and had a small role in the BBC drama Death in Paradise in February 2014.

In 2014 Anderson was cast as Danny Pink, a teacher at Coal Hill School, in the eighth series of the BBC science fiction series Doctor Who, appearing in eleven episodes. Between 2014 and 2017 he played Daniel in the Sky1 sitcom Trollied, and in 2016 he appeared in the BBC One drama Moving On. The following year he starred in the Channel 4 comedy Loaded. He subsequently appeared as William in the Netflix science fiction series Another Life, which ran for two seasons between 2019 and 2021 before being cancelled in February 2022. Most recently, Anderson played Mal in the comedy series Amandaland in 2025, which has been renewed for a second series.