CV: Jenna Coleman

Currently playing tormented mother Joanna in The Cry (9pm, BBC1), Jenna Coleman, 32, is steadily becoming one of British television’s biggest stars…

Childhood ambition: Born in Blackpool in 1986, Jenna was named after the character played by Priscilla Presley in the US soap Dallas. A ‘bit of a tomboy’ as a child, by the age of ten, she knew that she ‘wanted to act full-time’. In 2005, at the age of 19, while auditioning for drama schools, she won the role of troubled Jasmine Thomas in Emmerdale, a part she played for more than three years, and for which she was nominated for several awards.

Picking up speed: In 2009, she was cast as schoolgirl Lindsay James in

Waterloo Road – being 23 at the time, she described the experience as ‘surreal’.

Roles in TV dramas including Room At The Top, Dancing On The Edge and Death Comes To Pemberley followed. The Doctor will see you now: In 2012, Jenna won the role that would bring her to a much wider audience, playing Clara Oswald in Doctor Who; she was companion to both Matt Smith’s 11th Doctor and Peter Capaldi’s 12th. After three full series, she made a final appearance in the 2017 Christmas episode, Twice Upon A Time. By royal appointment: The year 2016 saw Jenna taking the lead in ITV’s drama series Victoria, playing the British monarch. Such was the success of the first and second series that a third is in the pipeline. The show has had an impact not just on Jenna’s career, but on her personal life, too – she lives with her co-star Tom Hughes, who plays Victoria’s beloved husband, Prince Albert.