Miranda Richardson

Born: 3rd March 1958
Where: Southport, Lancashire

The range of the twice-Oscar nominated onetime wannabe vet has taken in roles from Blackadder's Queenie to a philandering MP's wife in Damage.

The daughter of a marketing executive, she performed in school plays at Southport High School for Girls and displayed a gift for mimicry.

Richardson left school at the age of 17 with the intention of becoming a vet or studying English literature at university.

However, she opted for drama and enrolled at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School from where she landed work at Manchester's Library Theatre as assistant stage manager.

After several regional productions, she moved to London and landed minor TV roles as well as making her big screen debut in the 1985 horror yarn Underworld.

She landed her big break with the lead role of Britain's last woman to be hanged - Ruth Ellis - in 1985's Dance With A Stranger opposite Rupert Everett.

The performance caught the eye of director Steven Spielberg who cast her in Empire of the Sun, based on JG Ballard's autobiography, in 1987.

At the same time she made her first appearance in Ben Elton and Richard Curtis's comedy Blackadder as Queen Elizabeth opposite Rowan Atkinson.

She also turned down the role eventually taken by Glenn Close in the "bunny boiler" thriller Fatal Attraction.

In 1992, she played a depressed London housewife in Mike Newell's Enchanted April and also the wife of an unfaithful MP in Louis Malle's Damage (for which she was Oscar nominated).

Just to demonstrate her versatility, the same year she also portrayed an ice-cold IRA assassin in Neil Jordan's critically-acclaimed The Crying Game.

Two years later she was Oscar-nominated as TS Eliot's disturbed wife in Tom & Viv and also picked up a Golden Globe for her starring role in the Nazi fantasy Fatherland.

Opting for smaller, independent features she appeared in a run of relatively unknown movies such as Kansas City and The Designated Mourner.

In 1999, she played the Crone in Tim Burton's gothic horror Sleepy Hollow and supplied the voice of Mrs Tweedy in the animated cartoon Chicken Run in 2000.

Next up was an ill-advised appearance in the American remake of Get Carter with Sylvester Stallone.

In 2002, she appeared in David Cronenberg's Spider as well as alongside Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore in Stephen Daldry's The Hours.

The following year she starred in the low-budget Australian feature The Rage in Placid Lake and had a brief role as a London gangland boss in The Actors with Michael Caine.

In 2004, she played both Eva Braun in Churchill: The Hollywood Years as well as Madame Giry in Joel Schumacher's The Phantom of the Opera.

Upcoming roles include the part of Rita Skeeter in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.