She’s walked the halls of Chicago’s County General in ER and flown in the Tardis in Doctor Who, but Alex Kingston will now traverse the Strictly dancefloor.
The 62-year-old actor was born in Surrey and trained at Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) alongside Ralph Fiennes, her future husband.
She made her screen debut in 1980, in BBC series Grange Hill, and found major success that decade on stage; after joining the Royal Shakespeare Company, she played some of the playwright’s most famous roles well into the 1990s.
It was in the 1990s that Kingston received her big TV break. After small guest roles in British shows The Bill (1988-95) and Soldier, Soldier (1993), she started to gain wider recognition thanks to ITV crime drama The Knock and her Bafta-nominated performance in Daniel Defoe adaptation The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders (both 1996) opposite future Bond star Daniel Craig.
But it was her role as Dr Elizabeth Corday in medical drama ER that propelled her to global stardom. She made her debut in 1997’s season four premiere, which was a special live instalment, and remained a main cast member on the series until its 11th season in 2004.
Kingston was candid about her departure, revealing that the producers wanted to replace her with younger cast members. However, she maintained that she was very proud of the work she had done and was grateful for the professional associations and friendships she made on the show.
Her character returned for two episodes in the show’s 15th and final season, which aired in 2009, bringing her overall episode tally to 160.
Kingston revealed that she almost starred in another long-running US series. The star auditioned for Felicity Huffman’s role of Lynette Scavo in Desperate Housewives, but claimed she was rejected for being “too curvy”.
While starring in ER, Kingston also appeared in neo-noir film Croupier alongside Clive Owen as well as Boudica, a 2003 ITV drama that introduced the world to Hollywood star Emily Blunt.
Her next big role, though, arrived in 2008 when she was cast as River Song in Doctor Who. What she believed to be a guest appearance turned into a recurring role, with Kingston returning for 13 more episodes opposite Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi’s incarnations of the Time Lord.
She followed this up with a role in Gilmore Girls revival A Year in the Life (2016), fantasy drama A Discovery of Witches (2018-22), Netflix’s Treason (2022) and 2024 ITV show Douglas is Cancelled, which reunited the actor with former Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat.
In 2023, she returned to the Royal Shakespeare Company after 30 years to play Prospero in The Tempest.
Kingston was in a relationship with Fiennes for 10 years before they married in 1993, but two years later, Fiennes had an affair with actor Francesca Annis.
Fiennes separated from Kingston in 1995 and the pair divorced in 1997.
Kingston married German writer Florian Haertel, with whom she shares a daughter, the following year and, after their divorce in 2013, she married TV producer Jonathan Stamp in 2015.
Ahead of her Strictly debut, Kingston said she was inspired to join the show after seeing her friend, Miranda actor Sarah Hadland, finish as a runner-up on last year’s series.
“I reached out and asked her what her experience of having been part of the show [was], and she was really honest with me about how hard it is, how overwhelming it can be but also how it absolutely changed her life and that she would do it again in a heartbeat,” she said.
