Trivia: Attended kindergarten with Peter Morgan, the British film writer and playwright. Had his first television role at 22. Featured in art duo Gilbert and George's photographic work The World. Enjoys driving camper-vans. Is close friends with Harry Enfield. Was awarded an honorary doctorate from Bournemouth University in 2007. Elected president of the British Horse Society in June 2011. Became patron of Animal Care in Egypt in 2011. Appointed an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) by Queen Elizabeth II in her 2015 Birthday Honours. Owns a farm where cart horses are bred. Supports Weldmar Hospicecare Trust in Dorset and The Dog Resue Federation. Has been involved with the Comic Relief charity which funds Survival International and African Initiatives.

Trivia: After joining Equity, the trade union for actors in the United Kingdom, she found that somone had the same name as her and so changed to Caroline Catz. Decided on the name Catz after seeing a doodle of a cat. Is allergic to cats. Used to sing in a band called Monoland and a folk band called Sapphire. Appeared in Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' music video for More News From Nowhere.

Trivia: A member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, British actor Ian McNeice has found additional success playing supporting roles in feature films and on television. He made his first film appearances in 1983, and has subsequently specialized in comedies, ranging from the gentle The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain (1995) to the riotous Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls (1995) to the surreal A Life Less Ordinary (1997). McNeice's television credits include performances in several PBS productions, including Edge of Darkness and Nicholas Nickelby.

Trivia: Appeared in Sun-Pat peanut butter adverts as a child. Made his acting debut in Antonia and Jane in 1991. Won the Best Actor Award at the British Soap Awards for his role as Matthew Rose on Eastenders in 2000. Appeared in the celebrity version of Total Wipeout in 2010 and won £10,000 for charity. Is a patron for the Hill Park Autistic Trust.

Trivia: In 1999, performed in the Tennessee Williams play 'Baby Doll' at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. Between 2007 and 2019, starred as PC Joe Penhale in ITV Drama Doc Martin. In 2012, performed as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company production of The Taming of the Shrew. Starred as Ray Wilson in BBC drama In the Club between 2014 and 2016. Performs as part of comedy duo The Brothers Marquez, alongside his real-life brother Martin.

Trivia: Has a history with Dublin's The Gate Theatre; played Ruth in The Homecoming (2001), Alma in The Eccentricities of a Nightingale (2013) and Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire. In 2009, was about to sign a theatre contract when the part of Edith in Doc Martin came up; took an instant liking to Martin Clunes and the character and signed with Doc Martin instead. While appearing in Harold Pinter's Old Times in London, alternated the two female roles with Kristin Scott Thomas during the play's run in 2013.

Trivia: One of England's most renowned stage actresses, Eileen Atkins has been a staple of both the Royal Shakespeare Company and London's West End since the 1960s. She has also popped up occasionally on film and television, and she has made numerous contributions to both mediums as a scriptwriter, most notably for the acclaimed series Upstairs Downstairs and House of Eliott and the well-received screen adaptation of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway.A product of London's East End, where she was born in the Clapton Salvation Army Home on June 16, 1934, Atkins grew up in a council home as the third child of a homemaker and a gas meter reader. She began performing as a tap dancer in working men's clubs at the age of seven, and she had done professional pantomime by the time she was 13. Under the encouragement of a school instructor -- who gave Atkins voice lessons to remove her Cockney accent and introduced her to Shakespeare -- she went on to attend the Guildhall School of Drama, where she did a teaching course and took drama classes.Atkins struggled to begin her professional career, finding it difficult to get stage roles of any substance, to say nothing of stage roles, period. She got her first break when she moved to Stratford with her then-husband, Julian Glover, who had found work with the RSC. Atkins got her start in Stratford as an usherette, and she gradually moved her way up until she was allowed into the company. She first performed on the Stratford stage as Audrey in As You Like It, chosen to fill in for the understudy of Dame Peggy Ashcroft after both had taken ill. Atkins spent several years with the RSC, performing in both classical and contemporary plays alongside the likes of Lawrence Olivier and Alec Guinness. On the London stage, she portrayed numerous characters, earning a Best Supporting Actress Olivier Award for her performance in Peter Hall's production of The Winter's Tale. Her one-woman show, A Room of One's Own, was an international success, earning Atkins a Drama Desk Award for Best Solo Performance and a special Citation from the New York Drama Critics Circle for her portrayal of Virginia Woolf.Although the international stage has been the centerpoint of Atkins' career, she has made many contributions to film and television. Aside from her work on the aforementioned Upstairs, Downstairs, The House of Elliot, and Mrs. Dalloway (the last of which earned her the Evening Standard British Film Best Screenplay award), she has appeared in such films as Let Him Have It (1991), Jack and Sarah (1995), and John Schlesinger's Cold Comfort Farm (1995). Among the endless honors Atkins holds is a Commander of the British Empire. Atkin would appear in several notable projects over the coming years, including Gosford Park, The Hours, Cold Mountain, and TV series like Doc Martin and Psychoville.

Trivia: Made her stage debut in Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit, at the age of 17. Won the 1992 Best TV Actress British Comedy Award for her role in Waiting for God. Reprised her debut role in Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit in 2004, at the age of 63. Made an OBE in 2005, for services to Drama, Elderly People and to Mental Health Charities. Won the 2012 Best Comedy Performance British Soap Award for her role in Coronation Street. Is an ambassador for medical charity Overseas Plastic Surgery Appeal.

Trivia: Met IT Crowd co-star Chris O'Dowd while they were attending the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Left the LAMDA to star in the play The Age Of Consent at the Bush Theatre in London in 2002. Won the British Comedy Best TV Actress Award in 2009 for her role in The IT Crowd. Received a second British Comedy Best TV Actress Award and a BAFTA TV Award in 2014 for her role in The IT Crowd. Was nominated for an Olivier Award in the Best Actress category for her role in Home, I'm Darling in 2019. In 2019, her debut work as a playwright Sitting had its London premiere, following a month-long run at the Edinburgh Fringe.

Trivia: Scottish-born Clive Russell is six and a half feet of bone and sinew. Add to his imposing stage presence his impressive acting skill and you have a colossal acting machine that can cry, bend steel, and recite Shakespeare. Russell has used his attributes to play Helfdane the Large in The Thirteenth Warrior, Ajax the Great in Troilus and Cressida, and blacksmith Joe Gargery in Great Expectations. For his portrayal of a gigantic but gentle ex-coal miner in the acclaimed Margaret's Museum, Russell earned a Canadian Academy Award nomination for best actor. Russell's appetite for acting is as big as he is. Between 1997 and 2001, he completed 24 films in addition to TV and other projects, including such high-profile productions as The Mists of Avalon (TV miniseries), Oliver Twist (TV miniseries), and Oscar and Lucinda. No, he probably won't replace Sean Connery as Scotland's most famous actor. But he certainly deserves recognition as one of Scotland's best actors -- right up there among Connery, Ewan McGregor, Dougray Scott, and Robert Carlyle.Russell first performed before an audience in 1960 on the Shari Lewis Show. But it was not until 1980 that he got his first real acting job -- performing on the London stage as the superintendent in Nobel Prize-winner Dario Fo's satire The Accidental Death of an Anarchist, about police corruption in Italy. The reviews were good, and he reprised that role for television in 1983. After further honing his skills in various British TV productions and a handful of films -- including Jute City, The Power of One, The Hawk, and Seconds Out -- Russell received exposure before international audiences as Caleb Garth in the celebrated BBC miniseries Middlemarch, based on the George Eliot novel of the same name. A year later, he fell in love on the movie screen with Helena Bonham Carter in Margaret's Museum, earning laudatory reviews worldwide. Clive Russell had arrived. After more TV roles and another film, Russell played Ralph Fiennes' father in another critically acclaimed film, Oscar and Lucinda. Growing recognition of his acting skills then brought him plum roles in four major TV miniseries: Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, The Railway Children, and The Mists of Avalon. In the same year that he made Mists, Russell also performed in The Emperor's New Clothes, starring Ian Holm as Napoleon. In 2002, his career reached new heights when he took on a role in a BBC/Columbia Tristar production about a mountain-rescue team in Scotland.