Caroline Catz

Catz was born on 19 October 1969^[1] in Manchester to Jewish parents ^[2] Bernard and Rosemary Caplan.

She played opposite Michael Kitchen in the TV movie The Guilty in June 1992. In 1994, she took a lead role in the BBC's All Quiet on the Preston Front, which ran for three series. She followed this with a spell in The Bill as Rosie Fox, during which she met Michael Higgs, who later became her husband. Her part in The Bill was the first of four long-term roles in which she played police officers: in The Vice she was a PC; in Murder in Suburbia and DCI Banks she was a Detective Inspector.

From 2004 to 2022, Catz starred in ITV's Doc Martin, in which she played primary school headmistress Louisa Ellingham (née Glasson).

Catz continued to appear in one-off roles, including In Denial of Murder, in which she played real-life murder victim Wendy Sewell, and in an episode of Hotel Babylon. She also appeared in a two-part episode of Single Handed, entitled The Stolen Child, as Dr Maggie Hunter. Originally shown in Ireland in January 2008, the episode was broadcast by ITV on 9 August 2009.

From 2012 until 2016, she played Detective Inspector Helen Morton in DCI Banks. In November 2016, ITV cancelled the programme.^[3][4]

In 2014, Catz directed the documentary titled A Message to the World...Whatever Happened to Jesse Hector? Also in 2014, she narrated the BBC's television documentary Ebola – The Search for a Cure.

Catz starred in the 2016 BBC One sitcom series I Want My Wife Back, playing the role of Bex.

In 2017, Catz wrote, directed, and starred in a short documentary on Delia Derbyshire, Delia Derbyshire: The Myths And The Legendary Tapes, (2017), which was screened at the BFI London Film Festival.^[5] She expanded it into a feature-length film that debuted in October 2020.^[6]

In 2018, she was the narrator on Britain's Biggest Warship, a documentary series about the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth (R08).^[7]

Since 2007, Catz has been married to actor Michael Higgs, whom she met on the set of The Bill in the late 1990s. They have a son born in 2001 and a daughter born in 2006.^[12][13]