We hope you will join us for ‘Why I Act’ with BAFTA-winning actor Katherine Parkinson.

Katherine is one of the UK’s most versatile performers, working regularly in both film and television and theatre and embracing dramatic and comedic roles. Recent credits include the hit series Humans for Channel 4/AMC and Mike Newell’s Guernsey.

She studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) before starring in The Age of Consent at the Bush theatre. She then moved into television with a regular part in UK TV series Doc Martin for ITV before landing her break-out role in Channel 4 comedy series The IT Crowd. She was nominated for multiple awards and won the award for the best female performance in a comedy role at the BAFTA TV awards in 2014. Parkinson’s further TV roles include the high-end drama The Honourable Woman for BBC Worldwide and Drama Republic, comedy The Kennedys for the BBC, clone drama Humans for Channel 4, and Kay Mellor’s In the Club for Rollem Productions.

On stage Parkinson has appeared at the Royal Court Theatre in Chekhov’s The Seagull in 2007, alongside Mackenzie Crook and Kristin Scott Thomas. She returned to the Royal Court in 2009 to star in Cock by Mike Bartlett. She made her Royal National Theatre debut in 2010 in Season’s Greetings and her Barbican Theatre debut the following year as Lady Teazle in The School for Scandal. Further appearances include Absent Friends at the Harold Pinter Theatre in 2012, Before the Party at the Almeida Theatre in 2013, Dead Funny at the Vaudeville Theatre in 2016 and Home I’m Darling at the National Theatre in 2018.

Parkinson’s film roles have included Stephen Elliot’s Easy Virture, Robert Weide’s How To Lose Friend And Alienate People, Oliver Parker’s St Trinians 2, Richard Curtis’s The Boat That Rocked and Mike Newell’s The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society, How To Sell A War and Radioactive.