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Jenna Coleman — initially credited in Doctor Who as Jenna-Louise Coleman — played companion Clara Oswald in Doctor Who from 2012-15. Coleman later appeared as Bonnie in The Zygon Invasion and read AudioGO audio story The Time Machine with Michael Cochrane and Nicholas Briggs.
Prior to landing the role on Doctor Who, Coleman was perhaps best known for portraying Jasmine Thomas in Emmerdale and had also appeared in Waterloo Road as Lindsay James, the Marvel feature film Captain America: The First Avenger as Connie and the 2012 miniseries Titanic as Annie Desmond.
Coleman was born in Blackpool, Lancashire. Incidentally, Blackpool is also the home town of her character, the modern Clara Oswald, as revealed in Robot of Sherwood.
In 2012, Coleman also introduced the prequel, The Great Detective, and the trailer for The Snowmen, for their broadcast during Children in Need.
Jenna-Louise Coleman first appeared on Doctor Who in Asylum of the Daleks, the only episode she shared with Matt Smith's former co-stars, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill. Coleman's character, Oswin, died at the end of the episode. She later returned as a temporary companion in the Christmas special and her character, this time named Clara, died again. Coleman then joined as a full-time companion in The Bells of Saint John, once again playing a woman called Clara who was a third incarnation of Clara Oswin Oswald. In The Name of the Doctor, she played about six additional incarnations of Clara, including one who has a brief discussion with the First Doctor (allowing Coleman, via digital editing, to share a scene with the late William Hartnell).
In June 2013, Coleman announced that she was shortening her professional name to Jenna Coleman, and was credited thus beginning with The Day of the Doctor.[1] (She does not actually receive screen credit for the minisode Clara and the TARDIS, which was released after the announcement.)
Also in 2013, she appeared as herself in The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, and also co-starred in the three-part BBC miniseries Death Comes to Pemberley, which began the day after the broadcast of The Time of the Doctor.
Coleman has become the longest-serving companion actress of the revival era, surpassing Karen Gillan by several episodes.
In addition to the various versions of Clara, during her time on the series Coleman also portrayed a holographic interface created by The Doctor's TARDIS in Hide and the Zygon commander Bonnie in The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion. Among the multiple Clara echoes in The Name of the Doctor, was one featured in a sequence that allowed Coleman to exchange words (via reedited archival footage) with William Hartnell. She also played multiple versions of the "original" Clara in the Clara and the TARDIS minisode.
After filming her final scenes for Doctor Who in late August 2015, Coleman took on the lead role of Queen Victoria in the ITV miniseries Victoria. During a break in filming series 9, she shot a supporting role in the romantic drama Me Before You.
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