Freema Agyeman

Freema Agyeman (/ˈfriːmə ˈædʒɪmən/; born Frema Agyeman; 20 March 1979) is an English actress. She rose to fame with her role as the Doctor's companion Martha Jones in the BBC science fiction series Doctor Who (2007–2010) and its spin-off Torchwood (2008), and received further recognition for playing Crown Prosecutor Alesha Phillips in the ITV crime procedural Law & Order: UK (2009–2012), Amanita Caplan in the Netflix science fiction drama Sense8 (2015–2018) and Dr. Helen Sharpe in the NBC medical drama New Amsterdam (2018–2023).

Following her departure from Doctor Who, Agyeman reprised her role as Martha Jones in the Doctor Who spin-off series Torchwood and had a part as Tattycoram in the BBC period miniseries Little Dorrit (both 2008). In 2013, she made her US television debut in The CW's Sex and the City prequel series, The Carrie Diaries, as magazine editor Larissa Loughlin.

Her other television appearances include Mile High (2005), Bizarre ER (2008), and Dreamland (2023). Agyeman has also appeared in films, including North v South (2015), Eat Locals (2017), and The Matrix Resurrections (2021).

Agyeman was born on 20 March 1979 in Hackney, East London. Her mother, Azar Azizian-Kohan, born in 1948, is Iranian, and her father, Osei Agyeman, is Ghanaian. They divorced when she was young. Agyeman has an older sister, Leila, and a younger brother, Dominic.

Although her mother was raised as a Muslim and her father was raised as a Methodist, Agyeman grew up to be a practising Roman Catholic. Agyeman attended Our Lady's Convent RC High School, a Catholic school in Stamford Hill. Later, during the summer of 1996, she attended the Anna Scher Theatre School in Islington, North London, and studied performing arts and drama at Middlesex University, graduating in 2000. She also took a theatrical course at Radford University in Virginia in 1998, even volunteering to work as a box-office assistant for student drama productions in which she was not cast.

When Agyeman began her professional acting career, she chose to use a different spelling of her birth name, Frema, as her professional name, to avoid pronunciation problems.

Before securing the part of Martha Jones in Doctor Who, Agyeman's most famous television role was playing Lola Wise in the revived series of the ITV soap opera Crossroads. For her performance, she was nominated in two categories, Best Newcomer and Sexiest Female, at the 2003 British Soap Awards. Agyeman also had small guest roles in such TV series as BBC's long-running medical drama Casualty, Sky One's airline drama Mile High and ITV's police procedural The Bill, in which she appeared twice as two separate characters. In 2005, she played Mary Ogden, a scene of crime officer, in an episode of Silent Witness.

Agyeman made her feature film debut in 2006, playing Nana in the independent drama Rulers and Dealers (2006), written and directed by Stephen Lloyd Jackson.