Jenna Coleman

The girl who skipped acting classes

Jenna Coleman didn't finish her training at drama school because real work came knocking early. In 2005, she chose to accept a role in the soap opera Emmerdale instead of continuing to study theory of the stage. That Jasmine Thomas character earned her first nominations and gave her the craft needed to keep up the pace of filming a daily series for four years.

But the stigma of afternoon soaps tends to follow British actors for decades. Coleman decided to make a clean break in 2009 and left the security of a steady salary to look for something darker. She appeared in Waterloo Road and had a brief film role in Captain America: The First Avenger in 2011, where she had only a couple of lines.

And then the TARDIS arrived.

In 2012, the BBC announced that she would be the new companion in Doctor Who. It was a risky move because the series was going through a complete generational change. Coleman played Clara Oswald for three seasons and became the companion who spent the most time on screen in the show's modern era. Her chemistry with Peter Capaldi was the engine that kept audiences tuned in between 2014 and 2015.

The weight of the crown and a change of pace

Leaving science fiction is often traumatic for many actors who end up typecast at fan conventions. Coleman avoided that slump by immediately signing on to star in Victoria in 2016. The ITV series demanded considerable physical effort from her to portray the monarch's pregnancies and aging across three full seasons.

And the gamble paid off.

Critics stopped seeing her as the girl running through space corridors and started treating her as a character actress. In 2018, she starred in The Cry, a psychological drama shot in Australia about the disappearance of a baby. It was the project that let her break away from her angelic-face image and show a much rawer, more worn-down side of herself.

In 2021, she took on a role in The Serpent for Netflix. She played Marie-Andrée Leclerc, the accomplice of killer Charles Sobhraj. For this role, she had to learn French and practice a very specific Quebec accent that would hide her Blackpool roots. Filming in Thailand was interrupted several times by the global health crisis, but the series ended up being one of the most-watched productions of that year.

Self-produced and a return to thrillers

Coleman began to take an interest in what happened behind the camera after almost two decades in front of it. In 2023, she starred in Wilderness, a revenge story for Prime Video in which the landscapes of U.S. national parks were as much of a star as she was. During this phase of her career, she started choosing projects where she would have greater creative control.

In 2024, she premiered The Jetty on the BBC, where she starred and also served as executive producer. The series was shot around Lancashire and tackled complex themes of consent and memory in small communities. This move into production aims to secure her financial and artistic independence in an industry that can be harsh on women once they turn forty.

She became more selective about her career.

In 2024, she also took part in the shoot for Control, a feature film in which she shares the cast with James McAvoy. The film was mainly shot on location in Berlin and required a production schedule of seven consecutive weeks under the direction of Robert Schwentke. The film's budget was set at 25 million dollars before sound post-production began in London.