Caroline Harding

Caroline Harding (born March 1962) is an English television actress and playwright. She has played recurring roles in the ITV soap opera Coronation Street and crime drama Scott & Bailey, as well as in the Netflix six-part mockumentary sitcom Hard Cell. She has also written and performed in numerous theatrical productions, including her play Two Sisters, which received nominations for two Manchester Evening News Theatre Awards for Best Play and Best Performance in 2007, and a one-woman show about the eminent Restoration actress Nell Gwyn.

Early life and education Harding was born and raised in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, England. She graduated from the Guildford School of Acting and worked extensively for the Royal Shakespeare Company in the late '80s. Soon after, she made her debut as a playwright with Postcards from Maupassant, a 2001 play based on the late 19th-century short stories by French author Guy de Maupassant, in which she also starred. It first premiered at the Edinburgh Festival and then, after receiving rave reviews from critics, went on a national tour. Sam Marlowe of The Times wrote: "All three actors are excellent throughout, but here Harding in particular is painfully funny and sad as the child-like, crazed wife. Her portrayal is still more impressive when you consider that, by contrast, just a couple of scenes earlier she was an elegant, icy society doyenne in sequins and silk." Ten years after the initial premiere, Harding adapted it into French Fancies. First performed in July 2006 at the Buxton Festival, it was soon followed by a national tour and nominations for two Manchester Evening News Theatre Awards for Best Play and Best Performance. Around the same time, Harding starred in the productions of Terrence McNally's Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune (2004), and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman (2007). She called it Pretty Witty Nell after a description of Gwyn by Samuel Pepys, the famed diarist and social commentator of the day.

Television Her television career began in a 1992 episode of the ITV crime drama Van der Valk, based on Nicolas Freeling's novels about a detective in Amsterdam, played by Barry Foster. She then appeared in all four episodes of the BBC Two medical drama Degrees of Error (1995), starring Beth Goddard, and all six episodes of the BBC One legal drama Fish (2000), starring Paul McGann in the eponymous role. In 2007, she briefly appeared opposite Robert Pattinson and Holly Grainger in The Bad Mother's Handbook, the television adaptation of the best-selling novel of the same name by Kate Long. She then had recurring roles in Scott & Bailey and Doctors in the early 2010s. Harding has also played five different characters, including three doctors, in another popular ITV soap opera, Emmerdale. Together with Lorna Brown, she led a storyline about a couple who found love in the prison and have no desire to leave.

Personal life Harding has been married to actor Chris Gascoyne, best known for his role as Peter Barlow in the soap opera Coronation Street, since 2002. In 2004, they starred opposite each other in the Octagon Theatre production of Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune. The couple have a daughter, Belle. Harding also has two children, Pip and Freddie, from a previous marriage to actor Jason Watkins.

Filmography