Joanne Whalley

Joanne Whalley (born 25 August 1961) is an English actress who began her career in 1974. She has since amassed numerous credits, primarily on television, but also in nearly 30 feature films, including Dance with a Stranger (1985), Willow (1988), Scandal (1989), The Secret Rapture (1993) and Mother's Boys (1994). Following her marriage to Val Kilmer in 1988, she was credited as Joanne Whalley-Kilmer until their divorce in 1996. Whalley was nominated for the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for the 1985 BBC serial Edge of Darkness, and was nominated for a Best Actress Golden Nymph Award at the Monte-Carlo Television Festival for the 2011 series The Borgias. Her other television roles include the 1986 BBC serial The Singing Detective; playing the title role in the 2000 CBS TV film Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, and as Claudia, wife of Pontius Pilate in the 2015 NBC series A.D. The Bible Continues. 2Early life Whalley was born in Salford, Lancashire, but brought up in Stockport, Cheshire, where she attended Bredbury Comprehensive School, before leaving to study at Harrytown Convent Girls' School in Romiley and the Braeside School of Speech and Drama in Marple. Whalley first appeared as a child in How We Used To Live and Juliet Bravo with bit parts in soap operas, especially Coronation Street and Emmerdale. Her early film roles include a non-speaking part as a groupie in Pink Floyd's The Wall; and as a young Beatles fan in Birth of the Beatles. 2Music In the post-punk era, she flirted with the fringes of the Manchester New Wave scene and was briefly a member of a Stockport-based band called the Slowguns but left before the release of their two singles. Later, she was the lead singer of the pop group Cindy & The Saffrons; in 1982, at Abbey Road Studios they recorded the Shangri-Las' song "Past, Present and Future" and the next year, "Terry" by Twinkl