The Bafta-winning actor on her toughest roles, teenage crushes, and the joy of finding her people at drama school
Born in Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire, in 1969, Monica Dolan is a TV, film and stage actor. She trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and won a Bafta for her portrayal of Rosemary West in ITV’s Appropriate Adult in 2011. She won the Laurence Olivier award for best supporting actress for her role in the West End production of All About Eve in 2019. Her other television credits include Mr Bates vs the Post Office, W1A, Sherwood, Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa, and Smoggie Queens. She stars in Onwards and Sideways, in UK cinemas from 6 November, ahead of its release on BBC iPlayer later this year.
That’s me staging a puppet show with a Waldorf Muppet, my head poking through the very 1970s-looking hatch in our house in Woking, Surrey. There’s a somewhat neglected Sindy on the side. I think she was an ice-skating one – I wasn’t massively keen on dolls, but I liked that you could move her legs around quite acrobatically, and if you bent her knee too far the plastic would snap and a wire would poke through.