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Annette Badland

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Annette Badland

Annette Badland (born 26 August 1950) is a British actress known for a wide range of roles on television, radio, stage, and film. She is best known for her roles as Charlotte in the BBC crime drama series Bergerac, Margaret Blaine in the BBC science fiction series Doctor Who, Mrs Glenna Fitzgibbons in the first season of Outlander, Babe Smith in the BBC soap opera EastEnders, Dr Fleur Perkins on the ITV mystery series Midsomer Murders, and as Mae Green in the Apple TV+ comedy-drama Ted Lasso. She was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role in 1993 for her performance as Sadie in Jim Cartwright's play The Rise and Fall of Little Voice; a role she reprised in the 1998 film adaptation Little Voice.

Annette Badland was born in Edgbaston, Birmingham. Her mother, originally from Loanhead, Scotland, relocated to Birmingham during World War II to work as a munitions and aircraft worker in the factories, where she met Badland's father. Her family often returned to Scotland for holidays and to visit family, and sometimes they holidayed in Wales.

Badland trained in acting at East 15 Acting School in Loughton, Essex, working in "rep" at Southwold Summer Theatre during her time there. Her performance as the maid in Private Lives for the Summer 1970 season earned her an Equity Card and the right to work in the professional theatre.

After drama school, Badland joined Ian McKellen's Actors' Company at the Cambridge Arts Theatre; her first professional productions were in director Noel Willman's Three Arrows (by Iris Murdoch) and Richard Cottrell's Ruling the Roost (Georges Feydeau) in October 1972. After pantomime (Toad of Toad Hall at the Dukes Theatre, Lancaster), at the end of that year she moved on to the 1973 season with the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford. Her Audrey in As You Like It was considered an auspicious debut in a leading company.

Badland joined the cast of Jim Cartwright's play The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, which centres on a shy young woman from Lancashire who expresses herself through song, at the Aldwych Theatre from October 1992 through February 1993. In 1994, she starred in Tony Kushner's post-communist tragic comedy Slavs!, which explored the repercussions of the post Soviet era.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, a play adapted from Muriel Sparks's novel about an otherwise inspirational teacher who transpires to have an unhealthy admiration for fascist leaders, saw Badland as headmistress Miss Mackay on London's West End in 1998. She went on to perform opposite Jude Law in both David Lan's 1999 production of 'Tis Pity She's a Whore and his 2002 production of Doctor Faustus at the Young Vic Theatre in London.

In 2006, Badland worked with The Peter Hall Company on two productions at the Theatre Royal in Bath, England. The first was Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, a drama centring on protagonist Isabella's moral dilemma of whether or not to sacrifice her virginity to save her brother. Second was writer Alan Bennett's ensemble piece Habeas Corpus, a farce penned in 1971 and set to modern music of that time. She went on to work with Hall again in 2007 in a production of Noël Coward's The Vortex at London's Apollo Theatre.

During the Tiata Delights Festival in 2009, Badland performed in Zimbabwean playwright Michael Bhim's The Golden Hour, a thriller set in a London hospital where the main character encounters a baby he thinks has been brought to the country illegally. That same year she participated in Hampstead Theatre's (London) fiftieth anniversary season by starring in Michael Frayn's play Alphabetical Order, which is set in a provincial newspaper library. Finishing out 2009, Badland featured as psychic medium Madame Arcat in Noël Coward's comedy Blithe Spirit at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, England.

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