Actress Hannah Waddingham will be among the stars attending the Bafta Film Awards 2024 on Sunday night.
Hannah will take to the stage at the Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall to give a special live musical performance during the award ceremony. Many viewers watching at home will recognise Hannah from a number of high-profile stage, TV, and presenting roles.
Hannah, 49, is a musical theatre icon has a stage career that spans over 20 years and has performed in both London’s West End and on Broadway and appeared in shows such as Spamalot, Kiss Me, Kate, and The Wizard of Oz. Hannah has been nominated for three Olivier Award nominations and won one for Into The Woods.
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Hannah has a successful career on TV but some fans may not realise she was underneath the headscarf of the character Septa Unella in HBO's Game of Thrones - who was known for shouting 'Shame' and abusing Cersei Lannister.
Viewers may also be surprised to know she had a main role in season 6 of ITV's comedy Benidorm as Tonya Dyke.
Hannah appeared in Netflix’s Sex Education and has a main role in Apple TV's Ted Lasso as Rebecca Welton - which saw her win a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 2021 and a Golden Globe nomination.
In 2023 Hannah also wowed crowds as she hosted the Eurovision Song Contest in Liverpool alongside Alesha Dixon and Ukrainian singer Julia Sanina
Hannah was loved by audiences across Europe and hailed as an instant national treasure after Eurovision. And she said 'given the chance she would host the event every year'.
Speaking after the event she said: "It was really the most ridiculously hard work for five days, but the greatest pleasure.
“The first thing I ever hosted was the Olivier Awards, barely two weeks before, that was literally the first time I had ever read from an autocue. And so then to move straight on to Eurovision, I felt slightly more adept.”
Hannayh's star continued to soar in 2023 and in the same year she received the entertainer gong at the Glamour Women of the Year awards, hosted the Earthshot Prize ceremony in Singapore, and starred in her own musical TV special, Hannah Waddingham: Home For Christmas airing on Apple+.
She was also the star of two festive ad campaigns, for yuletide tipple Baileys and high street giant Marks & Spencer.
Hannah was born in London and she grew up around the theatre. Stage talent runs in the family as her mum, Melodie Kelly, was an opera singer, as were both of her maternal grandparents.
She is a graduate of the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts and has a four-octave vocal range.
However, Hannah said she was discouraged from pursuing a career on television when she was younger 'due to her looks'. Discussing her childhood on BBC Radio 2 podcast, Michelle Visage’s Rule Breakers, in January, the theatre and TV actress said: “I had one drama teacher that said to the whole class ‘Oh Hannah will never work on screen because she looks like one side of her face has had a stroke.
“And I thought, I will do, I will do. Come hell or high water, I will work on screen and it gave me a complex for years.
“And this is why, in my Emmys speech, I made a point.
“The one thing I said to myself, ‘If this weird moment comes and I get this award, and I get my foot in this door, I’m going to rip it off its hinges for musical theatre people or theatre people to follow’.”
Also in the podcast, Waddingham said the headmistress at her school had discouraged her from pursuing a career in the arts when she refused to give her a reference.
“I remember saying to my headmistress… She said, ‘Oh, you’re bright enough to read drama’, and I said, ‘I don’t want to read drama I want to do drama,” she said.
“She refused to give me a reference. So I managed, thank God, to get a scholarship for the drama school I went to and I walked back in, put it on her desk and left the room without shutting the door.”
Reflecting on her time at school, she added: “She (headmistress) was always dismissive of me, because it wasn’t that I wasn’t academic, I knew what I wanted to do.
“So it annoyed her that I turned my back on my academia. So she would purposely put everyone else in the school plays and have me understudy just to punish me.”
Hannah is a single mum to nine-year-old daughter Kitty , who she shares with ex, hotelier Gianluca Cugnetto. She is also a fan of manifesting – visualising goals in your mind to bring them to fruition, which has gained popularity in recent years.
She told the Press Association in November:"I do firmly believe in manifestation, but I think you need to have the laser focus on it and in the same breath make it very clear that you’re grateful for what you have already.
“I say it out loud and say thank you for what I have already. I suppose it’s my form of praying really.”
Hannah added: "I think probably there’s an element of needing it at some point and it feeling like a last resort of wanting help, but now I like it [because] I think what you’re manifesting is what you’re really wanting in life.
“At the moment, there’s a little bit of ill health around my family so that’s the main thing, and my daughter will be moving [schools] so I need to sort out a good senior school for her.”
The EE Bafta Film Awards will be hosted by Doctor Who star David Tennant at the Royal Festival Hall on Sunday February 18.
The ceremony will be broadcast on BBC One and iPlayer from 7pm.
