Jennifer Hennessy

Acting

Jennifer Hennessy

Born 1970-01-01 · Stockport, Cheshire, England, UK

Jennifer Hennessy (born Jennifer Hayes in 1970) is an English actress. She has made numerous television appearances, including as Mrs. Brazendale in the BBC TV series Lilies. Hennessy trained for three years at the Central School of Speech and Drama, graduating in 1992. She has since appeared in a number of theatrical roles, as well as on television, including the character of Jude in The Office; Julie, the man-hating shop-assistant, in the "Fockin Mokky Bokka" episode of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps; and, in 2007, as Valerie Brannigan (the wife of Ardal O'Hanlon's character, Thomas Kincade Brannigan) in "Gridlock", an episode of Doctor Who, playing a vet in the BBC3 comedy "Pulling" (2008) and in the BBC mini-series South Riding in 2011. As a child, Hennessy was a member of the St Winifred's School Choir which reached number one on the UK Singles Chart in 1980 with the song "There's No One Quite Like Grandma". She also starred in BBC One drama Dickensian, a series based on Charles Dickens' characters. She played the role of Emily Cratchit, a character in A Christmas Carol. She returned to Doctor Who in 2017, playing Moira, the foster mother of Bill Potts.

Acting credits

Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1974 poster
6.6

Yorkshire, 1974. Fear, mistrust and institutionalised police corruption are running riot. Rookie journalist Eddie Dunford is determined to search for the truth in an increasingly complex maze of lies and deceit surrounding the police investigation into a series of child abductions. When young Clare Kemplay goes missing, Eddie and his colleague, Barry, persuade their editor to let them investigate links with two similar abductions that draw them into a deadly world of secrecy, intimidation, shocking revelations and police brutality.

Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1974

2009

Is Anybody There? poster
6.3

A young boy who lives in an old folks' home strikes up a friendship with a retired magician.

Is Anybody There?

2009

The Tichborne Claimant poster
8.7

In the late 19th century, Lord Tichborne, the ninth richest nobleman in England, disappears after a South American shipwreck. Some years later his erudite Afro-English valet, Bogle, is sent to investigate rumors that Tichborne survived and settled in Australia. An alcoholic ruffian answer's Bogle's inquiries claiming to be the lost heir. Bogle suspects fraud, but conspires with the claimant to split the inheritance should the latter succesfully pass himself off to friends, family and the courts. As the claimant returns to England to continue his charade, enough people confirm his identity to make both the claimant and Bogle believe that he just might be the rightful heir after all.

The Tichborne Claimant

1999

Flesh and Blood poster
5.5

A man who was adopted at birth traces his real parents, and discovers that they have severe learning disabilities and do not know he exists.

Flesh and Blood

2002

Dead Clever: The Life and Crimes of Julie Bottomley poster
5.4

When Julie Bottomley discovers her husband of 10 years has been sleeping with her sister, her first instinct is to kill him. However, rather than risk life imprisonment herself, she devises a better plan to get revenge on Ian by faking her own death and framing him for murder. But can she resist the temptation to let her jailed husband know just how "Dead Clever" she's been?

Dead Clever: The Life and Crimes of Julie Bottomley

2007

No artwork available
9.0

Spoof video diary. Steve Coogan takes on the roles of downtrodden Paul and the vivacious blonde Pauline Calf, who finally gets herself up the aisle with the man of her dreams. Even a punch-up in the toilet can't spoil her special day.

Pauline Calf's Wedding Video

1994

Lambing Season poster
6.5

A young man uncovers a disturbing truth about himself.

Lambing Season

2016

No artwork available
6.5

Dramatisation of the Stephen Downing case which involved the conviction and imprisonment in 1974 of a 17-year-old council worker, Stephen Downing, for the murder of a 32 year old legal secretary, Wendy Sewell, in the town of Bakewell in the Peak District in central England. Following a campaign by a local newspaper, his conviction was overturned in 2002, after Downing had served 27 years in prison. The case is thought to be the longest miscarriage of justice in British legal history, and attracted worldwide media attention.

In Denial of Murder

2004

Danielle Cable: Eyewitness poster
8.5

Dramatisation of the real-life road-rage killing in 1996 of Stephen Cameron by Kenneth Noye, who was also implicated in the Brinks Mat bullion robbery and the murder of a policeman. The only witness to the killing of Stephen Cameron was his fiancée, Danielle Cable, who was forced to change her identity after giving the evidence which convicted Noye.

Danielle Cable: Eyewitness

2003

The Violators poster
5.7

When Shelly meets Rachel, two dysfunctional girls from radically opposed backgrounds set off on a collision course that will leave one of them shattered, the other re-born. Set in the forsaken wastelands of Cheshire's little-seen urban overspill, The Violators charts a teenage girl's path from battle-hardened cynicism to the hope of a better life.

The Violators

2016

No artwork available
10.0

Chloe, a divorced schoolteacher, falls in love with educational psychologist Dan, only to be left heartbroken when the police arrest Dan on suspicion of sexually abusing a six-year-old that he has been assessing. Chloe is forced to confront the possibility that Dan may have also sexually abused her two daughters, Alice and Lucy.

Loving You

2003

Buried Treasure poster
6.4

Harry Jenkins is a self-made business man, who one day receives a message that his only daughter has died in a car crash. Last time he saw his daughter was at his wife's funeral. When trying to deal with his daughter's affairs, he finds out he is a grandfather of a nine-year-old girl, named Saffron. Since he is her only relative, social services hands over Saffron to him. At first he tries to get rid of her, but he soon finds out that they share more than his daughter, Saffron's mother. They take a trip from Manchester to London, to find Saffron's estranged father, but they find so much more

Buried Treasure

2001