Amanda Root

Amanda Root (born 1963) is an English stage and screen actress and a former voice actress for children's programmes.

Root is known for her starring role in the 1995 BBC film adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion, her role in the British TV comedy All About Me, as Miranda, alongside Richard Lumsden in 2004, and for voicing Sophie in The BFG.

She trained for the stage at Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art.

Root was born in Chelmsford, Essex. She began her career at the Leeds Playhouse in 1983 when she played Essie in Bernard Shaw's The Devil's Disciple.

"She was a remarkably complete actress even in her early twenties, when physically she looked little more than a child. With her dark soulful eyes she could command a stage, and the Royal Shakespeare Company saw her talent very early on."

She worked regularly with the RSC in Stratford-upon-Avon and London from 1983 to 1991, including playing the role of Juliet to Daniel Day-Lewis's Romeo; a very young Lady Macbeth; Cressida to Ralph Fiennes's Troilus, and Rosaline to his Berowne.

In 1995, she starred as Anne Elliot in Persuasion, co-starring Ciarán Hinds and John Woodvine. The film (made for TV, then released theatrically) was based on the novel by Jane Austen and was her first leading role in a film.

She won rave reviews (and was nominated for a Tony Award) in October 2008 for her portrayal of the control freak Sarah in The Old Vic's revival of Alan Ayckbourn's interlinked trilogy The Norman Conquests, directed in the round by Matthew Warchus.

Audio

She was the voice of Sophie in the animated film of Roald Dahl's The BFG (1989).

She portrayed Joan la Pucelle in the Arkangel Shakespeare's 2000 production of Henry VI, Part 1.

In 2006, Amanda Root undertook the marathon task of recording an unabridged audiobook of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Published by Naxos it has a running time of 20 hours 30 minutes, spread across 17 audio CDs: ISBN 978-962-634-357-9.

She had previously recorded an abridged 3-hour reading of Jane Austen's Persuasion, published by Hodder & Stoughton Audiobooks in July 2004: ISBN 1-84456-035-X.

In November 2007 for BBC Radio 4 she played in the Woman's Hour Drama serial adaptation of F. Tennyson Jesse's novel A Pin to See the Peep Show, and on 2 December 2007 was heard in Arnold Wesker's 75-minute radio play The Rocking Horse, commissioned by the BBC World Service to celebrate its 75th anniversary.

As part of the BBC Radio 4 Hopes and Desires season, she played Lindsey, an incurable romantic who yearns to meet a modern-day Heathcliff, in Nick Warburton's 30 minute comedy Catching Heathcliff, broadcast at 11pm on 15 January 2008.

She was the voice of Fanny in the 2-cassette 1997 BBC radio dramatization of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park.

Her stage credits include:

• Essie in The Devil's Disciple (Bernard Shaw), Leeds Playhouse, 1983
• Juliet in Romeo and Juliet and Hermia in A Midsummer Night's Dream, RSC small-scale tour 1983; The Other Place 1984
• Jessica in The Merchant of Venice, RSC Royal Shakespeare Theatre, 1984
• Moth in Love's Labours Lost, RSC Royal Shakespeare Theatre, 1984
• Lucy Ellison in Today by Robert Holman, RSC The Other Place, October 1984; The Pit Barbican Centre, May 1985
• Apricot in The Dragon's Tail by Douglas Watkinson, Apollo Theatre, October 1985
• Neuroza in Tell Me Honestly (Kenneth Branagh), Not the RSC Festival, Almeida Theatre 1985
• Adela in The House of Bernarda Alba (Federico García Lorca, directed by Núria Espert), Lyric Hammersmith, September 1986; Globe Theatre, January 1987
• Harriet in The Man of Mode (George Etherege), RSC Swan Theatre, July 1988; The Pit, April 1989
• Lady Macbeth in Macbeth, RSC Barbican Theatre, May 1989
• Betty McNeil in Some Americans Abroad (Richard Nelson), RSC The Pit, July 1989
• Cordelia in King Lear, RSC Almeida Theatre. September 1989
• Cressida in Troilus and Cressida, RSC Swan Theatre, April 1990; The Pit, June 1991
• Rosaline in Love's Labours Lost RSC Royal Shakespeare Theatre, September 1990; Barbican Theatre, March 1991
• Nina in The Seagull (Anton Chekhov), RSC Swan Theatre; November 1990; Barbican Theatre July 1991
• Cleopatra in Caesar and Cleopatra (Shaw),co-starring with Alec McCowen, Greenwich Theatre, February 1992
• The Manageress in 50 Revolutions (Murray Gold), Oxford Stage Company, Whitehall Theatre, September 1999
• Edith in Conversations After a Burial (Yasmina Reza), Almeida Theatre, September 2000
• Polina Bardin in Enemies (Maxim Gorky in a version by David Hare), Almeida Theatre, May 2006
• Sarah in The Norman Conquests, an interlinked trilogy by Alan Ayckbourn, Old Vic, October 2008
• Hester Collyer in The Deep Blue Sea (Terence Rattigan), Chichester Festival Theatre, July 2011