Hannah Waddingham

Hannah Waddingham is an English actress, singer, and television presenter born on 28 July 1974 in Wandsworth, London. She has worked extensively across stage, television, and film, earning widespread recognition and accolades including a Primetime Emmy Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and two Critics' Choice Television Awards. She has also received nominations for two BAFTA TV Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and three Laurence Olivier Awards.

Raised around the theatre, Waddingham comes from a family with musical heritage; her mother and maternal grandparents were opera singers, with her mother joining the English National Opera when Waddingham was eight years old. She holds a degree from the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts and possesses a vocal range spanning four octaves. Early in her career, she performed in dinner theatre productions before making her debut in London's West End in 1998 in Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens.

Throughout her theatrical career, Waddingham established a prominent presence on both the West End and Broadway. She earned three Laurence Olivier Award nominations for Best Actress in a Musical for her portrayals of the Lady of the Lake in Spamalot, Desirée Armfeldt in A Little Night Music, and Katharine in Kiss Me, Kate. Her other stage roles include Christine Warner in The Beautiful Game, the Witch in Into the Woods, and the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz, where she won a Theatergoers Choice Award.

In television, Waddingham began with appearances in series such as Coupling, Brookside, Footballers' Wives, and Marple. She later gained wider visibility playing Tonya Dyke in Benidorm, Septa Unella in Game of Thrones, and Sofia Marchetti in Sex Education. In 2020, she began playing football club owner Rebecca Welton in the Apple TV+ comedy series Ted Lasso, a role that brought her international acclaim along with a Primetime Emmy Award and a Critics' Choice Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series.

Waddingham has also expanded her screen career into feature films and voice work. Her film credits include Les Misérables, Winter Ridge, The Fall Guy, The Garfield Movie, and Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. Additionally, she voices Deliria in the animated series Krapopolis, earning an Emmy Award nomination for the role. Her television credits also extend to Hocus Pocus 2, Tom Jones, and the action-comedy series Ride or Die.

Beyond acting, Waddingham has hosted major events, including co-hosting the Eurovision Song Contest in 2023 and presenting the Laurence Olivier Awards in 2023 and 2024. As a musical performer, she released a single titled "Our Kind of Love" in 2000, which reached number 41 on the UK charts, and issued her debut live album, Hannah Waddingham: Home for Christmas, in 2023. She speaks French and Italian, and is the mother of a daughter born in 2014.