Zoe Telford

Zoe Telford
Born	1973 (age 46–47)[1][2] Norwich, Norfolk, England[3]
Alma mater	Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts[4]
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1993–present
Children	2[3]
Awards	Edinburgh International Film Festival Special Commendation Greyhawk, 2014[5]

Zoe Telford is an English actress.

Early life and education

Telford was born in Norwich, England. She started training as a dancer at a very young age and continued until she was in her 20s.[6] She attended the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts.[4] Her first break was on the show The Bill, a police drama, in 1993.[3]

Career

After guesting in The Bill, Telford appeared as a guest on several British TV shows before landing her first mini-series The Last Train (1999). One of her first recognisable works was arguably in the first season of Channel 4's Teachers (2001) where she played Maggie, a cop and Simon Casey's girlfriend, played by Andrew Lincoln. In the TV movie Men Only (2001), she played Alice, a nurse who was gang-raped by a group of men she had known and flirted with, played by, among others, Stephen Moyer and Martin Freeman.[7] She then played the social worker Christina Leith in Real Men (2003), a 2-part TV drama that tackled the subject of paedophilia.[8] Telford appeared as Eva Braun in the 2003 Emmy-nominated Hitler: The Rise of Evil opposite Robert Carlyle. The TV movie was broadcast on CBS with some controversy as it reportedly "likened the nation's acceptance of the Bush administration's preemptive strike on Iraq to the climate of fear that allowed Hitler to prosper".[9] Her screen time was short since the film focused more on the events leading up to the Final Solution.[9] In Agatha Christie's Poirot's Death on the Nile (2004), Telford played Rosalie Otterbourne, one of the cruise passengers alongside Emily Blunt, James Fox, and David Suchet. She played Alison Jackman, a young trainee at the fictional PR firm of Prentiss McCabe headed by Stephen Fry in the BBC's Absolute Power (2003–2005), and as trauma doctor Jane Cameron in The Golden Hour (2005), a 4-part miniseries from ITV.

Telford played Emily Trefusis in Agatha Christie's Marple's The Sittaford Mystery, produced jointly by Granada and WGBH-Boston. The show was broadcast in the US in 2006 as part of PBS's Mystery! anthology series and marked her second collaboration with James Fox. She was also in three different movies in the same year: This Charming Man, The Painted Veil (starring Naomi Watts), and The Truth (starring Elizabeth McGovern). She played Abigail Thomas, Assistant Private Secretary (APS) to the Sovereign, in the 8-episode ITV series The Palace (2008). The show was originally conceived as an answer to The West Wing but had to undergo several script changes and "ended up a different genre altogether".[10] She worked for the first time with Juliet Stevenson in the 3-part ITV series A Place of Execution; the show was broadcast in the US in 2009 as part of PBS's Mystery! anthology.

Telford appeared in other procedural shows including Law & Order: UK (2009), the second season of Criminal Justice (2009) where she played the defence barrister for Maxine Peake’s character Julie, Collision (2009) which was broadcast in the US under PBS’s Masterpiece Contemporary, as a freelance tabloid reporter in two episodes of the comedy series The Thick of It (2009), and Foyle's War (2010), shown in the US under PBS's Mystery! series. She was in Episodes 2 and 3 of the first season of the BBC's Sherlock (2010) as Sarah, a physician colleague and love interest of Dr. John Watson, played by her Men Only co-star Martin Freeman.[11] Telford's appearance as Freya Carlisle in Lewis (2011) reunited her with Juliet Stevenson and James Fox, and as Eva Storr in the BBC's Room at the Top (2012) with her Criminal Justice co-star Maxine Peak. She played the newly-created character Claire Sutton, a policy adviser, in the 2013 remake of Yes, Prime Minister.[12]

For her role as Paula, a beleaguered housewife who helps Mal, a blind veteran, find his dog in the film Greyhawk, Telford won a Special Commendation Award at the 2014 Edinburgh International Film Festival where the film premiered.[5]

She appeared in the Series 17 opening episodes of Silent Witness (2015) as DCI Jane de Freitas. Her role as Bella Cross, the daughter of one of the main suspects in the first season of Unforgotten (2015) reunited her with her former co-star in The Last Train, Nicola Walker. She played the tragic Clara Haber in the first season of National Geographic's Genius – Einstein (2017). She appeared in other British TV series (and PBS staples) like Death in Paradise (2018) as Michelle Devaux, a professional poker player, and Grantchester (2019) as Professor Jean Simms, Head of the Computing Department at the University of Cambridge, ca. 1950s. She played Sarah Bradford, the missing wife of DI David Bradford in the TV series London Kills (2019), produced by Acorn TV and acquired by the BBC for 2020 release in the UK.[13]

Personal

Telford has a son (b. 2010 or 2011) and a daughter (b. 2015). She lives in Oxfordshire.[3]

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1993	The Bill	Helen Shaw	Episode: “Rainy Days and Mondays”
1995	Soldier Soldier	Chloe Green	Episode: “The Army Game”
1998	Peak Practice	Sarah O'Shaughnessy	Episode: “All Fall Down”
1998	Invasion: Earth	Nurse Louise Reynolds	1 episode
1999	The Last Train	Roe Germaine	6 episodes
2001	Teachers	Maggie[14]	8 episodes
2001	Men Only	Alice	TV movie
2003	Real Men	Christina Leith	TV movie
2003	Hitler: The Rise of Evil	Eva Braun	TV film
2003-2005	Absolute Power	Alison Jackman	12 episodes
2004	Born and Bred	Rita Lennox	Episode: “Thick As Thieves”
2004	Agatha Christie's Poirot: Death on the Nile	Rosalie Otterbourne
2004	Cutting It	Dulcima Goodrush	1 episode
2005	Twisted Tales	Davina	Episode: “Txt Msg Rcvd”
2005	Match Point	Samantha
2005	Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo	Lily
2005	The Golden Hour	Dr Jane Cameron	4 episodes
2006	The Truth	Blossom
2006	Marple: The Sittaford Mystery	Emily Trefusis
2006	Afterlife	Ruth	Episode: “Lullaby”
2006	The Painted Veil	Leona
2007	The Waiting Room	Jem
2008	The Palace	Abigail Thomas	8 episodes
2008	Place of Execution	Nicola Curry	3 episodes
2009	Law & Order: UK	Sara Fraser	Episode: “Honour Bound”
2009	Criminal Justice	Anna Klein	Series 2, 5 episodes
2009	Collision	Sandra Rampton	3 episodes
2009	Beyond the Pole	Melissa
2009	The Thick of It	Marianne Swift	2 episodes
2010	Foyle's War	Lucy Jones	Episode: “Killing Time”
2010	Ashes to Ashes	Louise Gardiner	1 episode
2010	Sherlock	Dr Sarah Sawyer	2 episodes: “The Blind Banker” and “The Great Game”
2011	Lewis	Freya Carlisle	Episode: “Old, Unhappy, Far Off Things”
2012	Room at the Top	Eva Storr	TV Movie
2013	Yes, Prime Minister	Claire Sutton	Series 1, 6 episodes
2013	Jo	Christina Sittler	Episode: “Opera”
2013	Love & Marriage	Michelle Paradise	Series 1, 6 episodes
2013	Greyhawk	Paula
2015	Silent Witness	DCI Jane De Freitas	Episodes: “Sniper's Nest” #153 & 154
2015	Unforgotten	Bella Cross	Series 1, 5 episodes
2017	Mass Effect: Andromeda	Foster Addison	Video game voice over
2017	Genius – Albert Einstein	Clara Haber	Series 1, Episodes 6 and 7
2018	Kiss Me First	Tracey	Episode: "You Can Never Go Home"
2018	Death in Paradise	Melanie Devaux	Series 7, Episode 2
2019	Grantchester	Jean Simms	Series 4, Episode 3
2019	London Kills	Sarah Bradford	Series 2, Episode 5

References

1. "One to watch". The Times. 22 November 2003. ...have become something of a stock-in-trade for the 30-year-old actress.
2. Imogen Fox (25 May 2008). "Zoe Telford". The Guardian. Retrieved 18 August 2019. ...I am 34 years old now...
3. Natalie Denton (6 July 2015). "Home is where the heart is". Norfolkmag. Retrieved 9 August 2019.
4. Emma Hartley (22 November 2003). "One to Watch". The Times. Retrieved 9 August 2019.
5. Leo Barraclough (27 June 2014). "Joanna Coates' 'Hide and Seek' Wins Prize for Best Brit Pic at Edinburgh". Variety. Retrieved 17 August 2019.
6. Jamie Lafferty (7 June 2008). "A piece of my mind: Zoe Telford, actress". The Herald. Glasgow. Retrieved 9 August 2019.
7. "Putting the brute in". The Observer. 27 May 2001. Retrieved 17 August 2019.
8. Kathryn Flett (15 March 2003). "Antisocial services". The Guardian. Retrieved 17 August 2019.
9. Michael Speier (11 May 2003). "Hitler: The Rise of Evil". Variety. Retrieved 17 August 2019.
10. Simon Reynolds (3 June 2008). "Zoe Telford ('The Waiting Room')". DigitalSpy. Retrieved 17 August 2019.
11. David Butcher (3 August 2010). "Sherlock – brilliant but too short". Radio Times. Retrieved 9 August 2019.
12. Ian Burrell (12 September 2012). "Yes, Prime Minister – there is a new show in town to worry about". The Independent. Retrieved 17 August 2019.
13. "BBC One Daytime confirms return of crime drama London Kills". BBC One. BBC. 15 August 2019. Retrieved 18 August 2019.
14. Cooke, Lez (18 October 2013). Style in British Television Drama. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 126–. ISBN 9781137265920. Retrieved 24 February 2014.

External links

• Zoe Telford on IMDb