Barbara Marten

Marten was born in Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire, and grew up in County Durham. She went to the all-girls William Newton School^[2] in Norton, then Stockton and Billingham Technical College.^[3] She went to drama school at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art as a teenager for three years,^[1] and later said that it put her off becoming an actress. Marten trained as a teacher in Birmingham and taught for two years before being drawn back to the stage.^[1]

After becoming involved with a theatre group in Coventry, Marten joined a newly formed theatre group in Doncaster. They toured Yorkshire, performing plays about various subjects, including the St Leger, and another about battered wives.

In 1996, Marten appeared at the National Theatre in Helen Edmundson's adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace.^[1] She has also appeared in various other plays such as Hamlet, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (at Manchester Royal Exchange^[4]), The Winter’s Tale (at the Royal Exchange), Get Up & Tie Your Fingers (Customs House), The Awkward Squad (West End), Heldenplatz (Arcola), The Enemies Within, Some Kind of Hero (at the Young Vic), The Glass Menagerie (Lyceum, Edinburgh),^[5] Everything Is Possible: The York Suffragettes (York Theatre Royal^[6][7]) and a touring production of An Inspector Calls.^[8][9]

From 1997 to 1999, she played the part of nurse Eve Montgomery in Casualty.^[7][10][11] Since then, she has appeared in many TV dramas, receiving much acclaim for her work in dramas such as Bob & Rose and Fat Friends. Marten played the lead role of Ellen in the film Between Two Women (2000), and then in A Passionate Woman (2010) as Moira. She appeared in the 2012 series Public Enemies.

Marten then played Hannah Greg in the period television drama series The Mill (between 2013 and 2014) which was about life at Quarry Bank Mill during the Industrial Revolution.^[12][13]

Marten appeared as Elizabeth I in the fantasy television series A Discovery of Witches,^[14] and has played Sylvia Chambers on the drama thriller television series The Devil's Hour since 2022.^[15] In 2024, Marten began portraying Sister Avila in the HBO science fiction series Dune: Prophecy.^[16]

Barbara and her husband, Mike Kenny,^[17] (writer of The Railway Children play) have three sons, Theo, Josh and Billy. Marten met Kenny in the 1980s, while acting in a student pantomime in Birmingham,^[18] when they were studying to become teachers.^[1] They have lived in York since 2004,^[1] having previously lived in Leeds.^[7] The children have studied at the Steiner School at Fulford.^[18]

In 2018, she was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play for her role in People, Places and Things at National Theatre/St. Ann's Warehouse.^[22]