Victoria Shalet

Victoria Shalet

Born	Victoria Shalet (1981-12-09) 9 December 1981 London, England
Occupation	Actress / Psychotherapist & counsellor

Victoria Shalet (born 9 December 1981) is a former English actress most famous for her role as Harmony in the award-winning CBBC adaptation of the Dick King-Smith book The Queen's Nose.

Acting

Whilst still at school, Victoria started her acting career at the age of six playing Rosie in the BBC screenplay Testimony of a Child based on the Cleveland affair. Next she played the daughter of Miranda Richardson and Michael Kitchen, 'Anna', in Andrew Davies's Ball-Trap on the Cote Sauvage. She then continued to work consistently throughout her school life within television, film, theatre and radio, including Goggle Eyes (1993) alongside Honeysuckle Weeks, and in the first three series of The Queen's Nose^[1] as main character Harmony. She later starred in David Jason's The Quest in 2002 and guest-starred in The Vice. She has also been involved in Jonathan Creek, Midsomer Murders and The Bill.

Notably, Victoria appeared in the horror film Haunted, which also featured Kate Beckinsale. Other films include The Maid alongside Martin Sheen; Shining Through with Melanie Griffith, Michael Douglas and Liam Neeson; Nick Dear's Eroica for the BBC; and The Affair of the Necklace with Hilary Swank. Her 2004 film Every Seven Years won critical acclaim at US film festivals.

On stage, Victoria appeared in a production of Philip Ridley's Fairytaleheart at the Hampstead Theatre (in February and March 1998), My Mother Said I Never Should at the Salisbury Playhouse (in October and November 2005) and Dan Muirden's The Things Good Men Do at the Old Red Lion (in March and April 2007).

In November 2007, Victoria appeared in an episode of BBC daytime soap Doctors as Beth.^[2] Later, in June 2009, she returned as PC Vicky Hilton in Doctors, portraying the role again in January 2010 and February 2011.^[3]

In April 2008, Victoria took the main role in a BBC Radio 4 Friday Play, entitled How Now TV^[4] written and directed by Paul Watson. She also provided the voice for Princess Medea in Dragon Quest VIII and the voices of Farmer Fi and Rora in Tractor Tom.

Victoria worked as a voice-over artist regularly and has voiced radio and television commercials for Alliance & Leicester, Compeed, Acuvue, Specsavers, Herbal Essences and Garnier.^[5]

Therapy

She has since re-trained as a humanistic psychotherapist and counsellor^[6] based in London.

She stated the following in regard to her career change "Before training to be a Psychotherapist, I spent 23 years working as an actor in film, television, theatre and radio. This career of observing the human condition fuelled my interest in people and how the mind works, why we do the things we do and how our interior world manifests itself in our behaviour and the space we take in the world around us."^[7]

Occupation Timeline

Acting - 1989 - 2012^[8]
Counselling - 2013–Present

Personal life

Shalet is the second cousin of the actress Kacey Barnfield.^[9]

References