Joanne Froggatt

Joanne Froggatt (born 23 August 1980) is an English actress. From 2010 to 2015, she portrayed Anna Bates in the ITV period drama series Downton Abbey. For this role, she received three Emmy nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series, and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress on Television in 2014. From 2017, she has starred in the ITV drama series Liar.
Froggatt’s early television appearances include Coronation Street (1997–1998), Bad Girls (1999), Dinnerladies (1999) and A Touch of Frost (2003). She went on to star in the television films Danielle Cable: Eyewitness (2003), See No Evil: The Moors Murders (2006) and Murder in the Outback (2007), before winning the British Independent Film Award for Most Promising Newcomer for her leading role in the 2010 film In Our Name.
Froggatt was born and brought up in the village of Littlebeck in North Yorkshire. Her parents, Ann and Keith Froggatt, having run a corner shop, next started a rare breed sheep farm on a smallholding near Whitby. Joanne has likened her childhood setting to the backdrop of Emily Brontë’s classic novel Wuthering Heights. Froggatt initially joined a drama group in Scarborough and then left her family home at the age of 13 to attend the Redroofs Theatre School in Maidenhead, Berkshire.