Zoë Wanamaker

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Wanamaker as Madam Hooch

Zoë Wanamaker CBE (born 13 May 1949) is an American-born English actress who is best known for her roles in My Family and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

Wanamaker was born in New York City and holds both American and British citizenship. She is the daughter of the late Jewish American film actor/director/producer Sam Wanamaker, who left the United States for Great Britain after being blacklisted during the 1950s and his wife, Charlotte Holland. Both of her parents died of cancer.

While she is probably best-known by a world-wide audience for her role as Madam Hooch in the film Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Wanamaker is best known in the UK for playing Susan Harper in the sitcom My Family.

She played Clarice, one of the dimwitted twin sisters of Lord Groan in Gormenghast, a BBC television adaptation of Mervyn Peake's trilogy. She has also appeared in a variety of films, programmes, and plays. Successful television series have included Love Hurts with Adam Faith.

Her stage performance in Sophocles' Electra, for which she won an Olivier Award, was widely acclaimed.

Wanamaker voiced a CGI character named Lady Cassandra in the Doctor Who episode The End of the World (2005), and reprised the role (also appearing in the flesh this time) in New Earth, the first episode of the 2006 series.

In November 1994, she married the British actor and dramatist Gawn Grainger.