Rebecca Root

Root was born in Woking, Surrey, England, assigned male. She is the second child of an auxiliary nurse mother, while her father was a banker in Guildford. She has two sisters.

When she was 11 years old, her family moved to rural Oxfordshire where she attended Bartholomew School in Eynsham. Root performed with local drama groups as well as the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain, whose alumni includes actors such as Lucy Briers, Jonathan Cake, and Daniel Craig.^[2]

She went on to graduate from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama with a Master of Arts in Voice Studies in 2012.^[3]

After finishing her sixth form education in 1987, Root moved to London full time in order to train as an actor at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts spent the next decade as a jobbing actor,^[2] working in a range of television and theatre productions, notably in TV shows like Keeping Up Appearances and Casualty, and stage plays like The Lady's Not For Burning, Hamlet, and Tartuffe.

Before her breakthrough in 2015 playing a supporting role in the award-winning film The Danish Girl (her debut in film) and a lead role in the groundbreaking BBC Two romantic sitcom Boy Meets Girl, Root considered that she played roles described as "a romantic lead, debonair, knight, a soldier—typically and boringly 'normal.'"^[4]

In 2015, Root also starred in the BBC Radio 4 drama 1977, about the popular transgender composer Angela Morley who had become a household name to British radio audiences as Wally Stott. It followed the year in which Morley was enlisted to complete composition of the musical soundtrack to the film Watership Down in three weeks.^[5] Root has also appeared in the Doctor Who audio series Stranded, part of the Eighth Doctor Adventures, playing Tania Bell, the Doctor's first transgender companion, and an operative of Torchwood monitoring the Eighth Doctor when he is trapped on Earth due to the TARDIS suffering damage.^[6]

Root is also a voice coach,^[7] teaching at the East 15 Acting School and from her home in Highgate, London. She started that career after she transitioned from male to female in 2003^[2] and acting work became harder to find.^[8] Root also advertises voice therapy lessons specifically for transgender people to help them "find a voice they feel fits their gender".^[9][10][11]

Root is a bisexual woman.^[2] She is also an advocate for LGBT rights and is patron for the charities Diversity Role Models^[12] and Liberate Jersey.^[13]