Natasha Emma Little was born in Liverpool on the 2nd of October 1969. However she spent much of her childhood travelling round the Middle East while her father Fred worked for the World Health Organisation setting up immunisation clinics and her mother Mary was an English language teacher in schools. By the time she was 10, Natasha had lived in 11 different countries. When her family moved back to England they settled in Loughton, Essex where Natasha attended Loughton County High School for Girls, and joined a Saturday drama group called the Epping Youth Theatre. She originally planned on a career in law, but was persuaded to apply to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama by her teacher after her role in a school production of the musical 'Chicago'. Natasha admits, "I thought that to go to drama school, you had to be the son or daughter of an actor. I didn't look much beyond what the other people in my family did. It was off my radar." It was only after a nudge from a teacher at her sixth-form college that she decided to apply to drama school and, even then, having gained a place at the Guildhall, she didn't start to think seriously about an acting career until the third year before graduating in 1994 with a BA in Drama. Her parents divorced when she was 15 and her mother now lives very near her in East London.
On graduating her first job was the Tenth Man at the Hampstead Theatre and then, after appearing in the BBC series 'Between the Lines' (1994), Natasha went back to performing on stage before she was spotted performing a play at the Latchmere Pub Theatre and that is how she won the role of Jenny in 11 episodes of 'London's Burning' (1995-96). Since graduating she has barely been out of work and owes her break into the big time to the zeitgeisty lawyer soap 'This Life' (1997). It is no exaggeration to say that Natasha once enjoyed the cult status of being British television’s most hated blonde. Not as herself, of course, but as Rachel, the beautiful, treacherous lawyer with the soft, wheedling, little-girl voice and the aura of sweet poison in this 90s decade-defining yuppie drama serial.
Her next big part was as the indefatigable social climber Becky Sharp
in Andrew Davies' 1998 adaptation of 'Vanity Fair' for which she won
the award for Best Actress in a Drama Series at the 1999 Biarrritz
International Television Festival. She also received a BAFTA nomination
for Best Actress in a Drama Series for the same role. Such was the
excitement generated by Natasha’s Becky that she was offered the lead in
the 2001 film 'Enigma', opposite Dougray Scott, only to have it
withdrawn when Kate Winslet suddenly became available. However Natasha
walked away with her full fee
(£300,000), taking instead a part in Richard Eyre's production of 'The
Novice' at the Almeida. Then, in 2004, came Mira Nair's Indian-flavoured
'Vanity Fair', in which Reese Witherspoon became Becky, while Natasha
was
cast in the minor role of Lady Jane Sheepshanks.
Natasha has been happily married since 2003 to 35-year-old actor Bohdan Poraj (short for Poraj-Pstrokonski). Always known as Bo, he's the British-born son of Polish parents and his first name Bohdan means 'gift from God'. She and Bo, who live in East London, had already met a couple of times in different productions at the National Theatre in the late 1990s before they were introduced properly by a mutual friend who was appearing alongside Bo in a production of 'Hamlet' at the Bristol Old Vic in 1999. With numerous TV credits to her name, Natasha has appeared in several well-loved shows in the likes of The Bill (1998 - 2009), 'The Nearly Complete and Utter History of Everything' (1999), 'Spooks' (2003), 'Extras' (2005), Foyles's War' (2008), 'Breathless' (2013), 'Thirteen' (2016) alongside Jodie Comer and 20 episodes of 'Absentia' (2019-20) among others with her latest being 'Ten Percent' (2022) as Charlotte Nightingale.
The film CV is a little patchier: there have been minor Brit flicks. 'The Clandestine Marriage' (1999), 'The Criminal' (1999), 'Kevin & Perry Go Large' (2000) plus 'Greenfingers' (2000), 'Another Life' (2001) for which she won the award for Best Actress at the Cherbourg Film Festival in 2001, and 'A Congregation of Ghosts' (2009). but her experience of Hollywood so far has been largely frustrating. She has also had many roles in theatre, including in 'Voyage Round My Father', 'The Vagina Monologues' and 'The Novice'.
Natasha is also a trained mezzo-soprano singer and is also trained in basic jazz, ballroom and period dance.
see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2024/06/a-history-of-liverpool-thespians-jake.html
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