Chanel Cresswell

Chanel Cresswell is an English actress best known for her BAFTA-winning role as Kelly Jenkins in Shane Meadows’s “This Is England” saga. Born on 23 January 1990 in Smalley, Derbyshire, and raised in the nearby village of Codnor, she discovered performing through a school production of “Bugsy Malone” and joined the Nottingham Television Workshop while still at school.

It was through that workshop that Meadows cast her, at just fifteen, as Kelly in the 2006 film “This Is England.” She went on to reprise the role across the acclaimed Channel 4 television sequels “This Is England ’86” (2010), “’88” (2011) and “’90” (2015), charting Kelly’s turbulent coming of age over nearly a decade and turning a supporting part into one of British television’s most memorable characters.

Her work in “This Is England ’90” earned her the BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress in 2016, a defining moment in her career and one of the series’ most celebrated performances.

Alongside the “This Is England” films, Cresswell became a familiar presence in British comedy and drama. She played Katie McVey across several series of the supermarket sitcom “Trollied” (2011–2018), appeared in the crime drama “The Bay” (2019), and portrayed Coleen Rooney in the docudrama “Vardy v Rooney: A Courtroom Drama” (2022), showing a range that moves easily between gritty realism and broad comedy.

More recently she joined the cast of Guy Ritchie’s Netflix crime comedy “The Gentlemen” (2024) as Tammy. Still rooted in the East Midlands where she grew up, Cresswell has built a reputation as one of the most versatile and grounded character actresses of her generation, equally at home in social drama and mainstream entertainment.

Educated at Aldercar Community Language College, Cresswell has spoken about how the Nottingham Television Workshop — the same training ground that produced a number of Meadows collaborators — gave her an early route into professional acting without a traditional drama-school background. That grounding has shaped a naturalistic style that critics have repeatedly singled out, and she continues to take on both television and film roles across genres.