Lizzie Hopley

Lizzie Hopley is a British actress and writer born in Liverpool who trained at Manchester University and RADA.

Acting work

Hopley's film and TV work include the horror film Legacy, starring Jack Whitehall, Lucy Hale and Anjelica Huston; comedy feature film Fackham Hall, co-written by Jimmy Carr and Dawson Bros; Black Doves with Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw; Steve McQueen's Blitz; The Reckoning (BBC/ITV), The Crown (Netflix), Time (BBC), The Devil's Hour (Amazon Studios), Brassic, Soulmates (Amazon AMC), The Long Song (BBC/Heyday Films), Little Boy Blue (ITV), Luther (BBC), Cary Fukunaga's Jane Eyre, Pierrepoint with Timothy Spall, The Thirteenth Tale with Vanessa Redgrave, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher (ITV), Any Human Heart (C4), The Day of the Triffids (BBC) with Eddie Izzard and Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased).

She can currently be seen as Margaret Thatcher in Shut Out the Light's feature documentary Iron Ladies about the women who maintained the 1884/85 Miners' Strike and will appear in a reimagined version of Romeo and Juliet at the New Vic Theatre in Newcastle-under-Lyme during September and October 2026.

Theatre work includes Caryl Churchill's Far Away in 2025 and the Globe Theatre's 2024 summer season of The Taming of the Shrew and Anne Odeke's debut play Princess Essex. Hopley appeared as Margaret Thatcher in The Audience, written by Peter Morgan (2019). Other theatre work includes The Roaring Girl, Arden of Faversham and The White Devil for the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), the original cast of Cheek by Jowl'''s world tour of 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, Kate in the AFTLS's 2018 US tour of The Taming of the Shrew and Ang in the No. 1 tour of Mike Leigh's Abigail's Party.

As an associate learning practitioner with the RSC, Hopley delivers workshops across the UK, US, China, Japan, South Korea, Malta and Cayman Islands and provides content for their online learning programme. She gives practical tutorials at the British American Drama Academy and designed a professional development course for Guildford School of Acting where she taught as an associate. She has delivered the practical sessions for the annual Shakespeare Foundation Certificate at Oxford University since 2011.

As a writer

Hopley's sitcom pilot, Green, won Pozzitive Television's Funny Dot Comp 2021. In 2021, she won the Scribe Award for the audio play The Curse of Lady Macbeth. Her debut one-woman play Pramface explored the consequences of reality television and labelling people as chavs, and won the Plat Du Jour at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2007.

Her radio plays include The Cenci Family, which starred Sally Hawkins and Daniel Evans for BBC Radio 4, The Elizabethan Beauty Law (starring Annette Badland as Elizabeth I of England) and Salome (starring Florence Hoath and Kenneth Cranham) for BBC Radio 3.

She was commissioned to write Killing Clovis Dardentor, an updated film adaptation of Jules Verne's Clovis Dardentor. She also wrote "Jam", a short film starring Stephen Fry, Annette Badland, Frank Skinner, Paul Daniels and Debbie McGee.

Big Finish Productions

Hopley has written and appeared in over 90 audio plays based on the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who. Her first appearance was as the Eighth Doctor’s companion Gemma Griffin in Terror Firma. She also portrayed Yarvell, the sister of Davros, in the I, Davros mini-series and was the voice of the TARDIS in audiobook Doctor Who: I, TARDIS : Memoirs of an Impossible Blue Box by Steve Cole.

In 2007 she voiced the Mantasphid Queen in the Doctor Who animated adventure The Infinite Quest, starring David Tenant and Freema Agyeman.

As a writer and actress, her work for Big Finish Productions includes: Dark Gallifrey: Master! (starring Eric Roberts) - writer & actressTerror Firma – actressNight Thoughts – actressThe Goddess Quandary - actressScorpius - actressFear – actressConversion - actressTelos - actressWildthyme at Large - actressThe Devil in Ms Wildthyme - actressI, Davros - actressLand of Wonder - actressDark Shadows: Kingdom of the Dead - actressShort Trips: The Centenarian - writerShort Trips: Snapshots - writerShort Trips: Defining Patterns - writerDark Shadows: The Carrion Queen - writer and actressTorchwood: The Dying Room - writerClass (Big Finish series) Volume 4: The Creeper - writer and actressTime Lord Victorious: Mutually Assured Destruction - writer The Tenth Doctor & River Song: Precious Annihilation - writerDoctor Who: Dalek Universe 3: The First Son - writerDoctor Who: The Tenth Doctor and River Song - writerDoctor Who: The Eleven (starring Mark Bonnar) - writerDoctor Who: The Ninth Doctor Adventures: Lost Warriors - The Curse of Lady Macbeth (Scribe Award Winner 2021) - writerTorchwood: Sonny - writerDoctor Who: The First Doctor Adventures: The Miniaturist (starring Annette Badland) - writerThe War Master: Self-Defence, His Greatest Trick & The Shadow Master (all starring Sir Derek Jacobi) - writerThe Diary of River Song: Beauty on the Inside - writer The Diary of River Song: The Wife of River Song - writerDoctor Who: The Ninth Doctor Adventures'': The Colour of Terror (starring Frank Skinner) - writer