NICOLA Walker has fast become one of Britain’s most sought after actresses.
The TV and film star is now riding high in the last ever series of The Split.
East-Londoner Nicola Walker was born on May 15, 1970 in Stepney, which makes her 51-years-old.
She attended Saint Nicholas School, Old Harlow, and Forest School, Walthamstow, and took acting classes from age 12.
Nicola then attended New Hall, Cambridge, where she first stepped out onto the stage, beginning her acting career with the Cambridge Footlights.
She was in good company as her fellow thespians included Spooks writer David Wolstencroft and comedian Sue Perkins, who were all part of the 1990 national tour.
Nicola was offered a place at the prestigious RADA school after graduating from Cambridge and began to pursue her acting career.
Based in London, she shared a flat with Sue, Sarah Phelps, and Emma Kennedy, and acted at the Edinburgh Festival and the London Festival Fringe.
The question should really be – what hasn’t she been in? – as Nicola continues to dominate British TV.
Nicola snagged her first major television roles were in 1997, as Gypsy Jones in Channel 4’s adaptation of A Dance to the Music of Time, and teacher Suzy Travis in two series of Steven Moffat’s school-sitcom Chalk.
She has also had guest roles Dalziel and Pascoe, Jonathan Creek, Pie in the Sky, and Broken News.
Nicola was cast in the leading role of DI Susan Taylor in ITV thriller Touching Evil in 1997 acting opposite Robson Green and in 2003, Nicola joined the cast of Spooks.
She remained with the show until the fifth series, when she left to give birth to her first child.
The star returned in 2009 and continued until the series ended in 2011.
Since leaving spooks Nicola has played a major character in the one-off BBC crime drama Inside Men and featured alongside Derek Jacobi, Anne Reid, and Sarah Lancashire, in fourth series of the BBC original drama Last Tango in Halifax.
In 2018 she starred in Collateral and the BBC drama The Split – the latter returned for a final series in 2022.
The star also appeared in the first four series’ of Unforgotten.
In 1994 Nicola famously starred in Four Weddings and a Funeral as one half of the “frightful folk duo”, who sings Can’t Smile Without You at the first wedding.
She also appeared in the feature film adaptation of the classic television series Thunderbirds (2004).
In 2005, she portrayed a British journalist caught up in the Rwandan genocide in Shooting Dogs.
Nicola is married to actor Barnaby Kay.
The couple have one son together called Harry, who was born in October 2006.
Their son is named after Harry Pearce, the character of her co-star Peter Firth in Spooks.
