Elizabeth Hopley is a British actress and writer.
She has appeared in several audio plays based on the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who. Her first appearance was as the Eighth Doctor’s companion Gemma Griffin in Terror Firma. She also portrayed Yarvell, the sister of Davros, in the I, Davros mini-series and Dorothea Waddingham in the 2005 film Pierrepoint.
Hopley was born in Liverpool and trained at RADA. Her film and television work includes the recent TV adaptation of Andrea Levy's The Long Song and ITV's 2017 drama series Little Boy Blue, the film adaptation of Jane Eyre directed by Sin Nombre's Cary Fukunaga, The Last Hangman, Channel 4's adaptation of Any Human Heart, Randall and Hopkirk, the BBC's The Day of the Triffids with Joely Richardson and Eddie Izzard, ITV's adaptation of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher starring Paddy Considine and The Thirteenth Tale for the BBC.
Notable theatre work includes the RSC's "Roaring Girls" Season and the original cast of Cheek by Jowl's world tour of 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. Most recently[when?], she played Kate in the AFTLS's 2018 USA tour of The Taming of the Shrew.
Among her written work is the one-woman play Pramface, which explored the consequences of reality television and labelling people as chavs.[1]
Her radio plays have included The Elizabethan Beauty Law[2] (which starred Annette Badland as Queen Elizabeth), The Cenci Family (nominated for a Sony Radio Academy Award) for BBC Radio 4 and Salome[3] (which starred Ian Brooker, Florence Hoath and Kenneth Cranham) for BBC Radio 3.
In 2007 she voiced the Mantasphid Queen in the Doctor Who animated adventure The Infinite Quest. She was recently commissioned to write the screenplay "Killing Clovis Dardentor", an updated film adaptation of Jules Verne's Clovis Dardentor for www.buyacredit.com. In 2011 she appeared as Harriet Gollop in the television film The Suspicions of Mr Whicher for ITV.
She appeared as Margaret Thatcher in The Audience, written by The Crown's Peter Morgan at the Nuffield (City) Theatre, Southampton (24 May – 22 June 2019).
Hopley's work for Big Finish Productions includes: