Sarah Sutton | |
---|---|
Born |
Basingstoke, Hampshire, England |
12 December 1961
Occupation | Actress |
Years active | 1973–present |
Known for | Nyssa in Doctor Who |
Spouse(s) | Husband |
Children | One daughter |
Sarah Sutton (born 12 December 1961) is a British actress best known for her role as Nyssa in the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who. Nyssa was first the companion to Tom Baker and then to Peter Davison, from 1981 to 1983.
Sutton was born in Basingstoke, Hampshire, England. Sutton studied ballet as a little girl and was only 11 when she became the youngest British actress to have played Alice on screen, in a 1973 television film of Alice Through The Looking Glass.
She began acting at the age of nine.
Besides her performance as Alice, Sutton appeared in a number of television programmes before Doctor Who, including The Moon Stallion (1978) as Diana Purwell and The Crucible (1980) as Susannah Walcott.
Before and during her time on Doctor Who SarahSutton was a student at the Guildhall School Of Music And Drama.
After joining the Fourth Doctor in 1981 in the story Logopolis, her final full Doctor Who serial was with the Fifth Doctor, in 1983's Terminus. Sutton, famously, removed her skirt for Terminus, effectively playing out the rest of the serial in her undergarments—the scripted reason being that she was feeling unwell and feverish as well as leaving a clue for The Doctor, though Sutton described it later as "a parting gesture to [the] fans".
Sutton took a break from acting after Doctor Who, focusing for a number of years on raising her daughter, Hannah, with her GP husband, Mike. She made a brief appearance in Peter Davison's final Doctor Who serial, The Caves of Androzani (1984), played Sarah Dryden in a 1989 episode of the BBC medical drama series Casualty and Wendy in a 1991 episode of Unnatural Pursuits.