Alex Kingston
Alex Kingston is an actor, born 1963.
For one set of viewers Alex Kingston is a surgeon, for another she is a time traveller, and the two audiences barely overlap. Born in Epsom in 1963 and working from the early 1980s, she built a reputation on British television first, taking the title role in the 1996 ITV miniseries The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders, which brought a BAFTA nomination for best actress. It is not among the credits listed here, but the 1989 film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover is, and so is the 1998 gambling drama Croupier.
Then came ER. She joined the NBC medical drama in 1997 as Elizabeth Corday and stayed until 2004, an English surgeon written as brisk, technically superb and socially graceless, which is a combination she plays better than almost anyone.
Doctor Who gave her the part fans will not stop asking about. River Song appears out of sequence, meeting the Doctor in the wrong order every time, and Kingston's answer to that structural gimmick was to play her as the only person in the room who knows the whole story and is enjoying withholding it, catchphrase included. The Husbands of River Song is the 2015 special built around her.
Since then: Sarah Bishop in A Discovery of Witches, Audrey Gratz in Treason, Judith Gray in The Widow, Naomi Shropshire in Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, Boudica in a 2003 film, and Dinah Lance on Arrow, which is likewise not among the credits listed here.
Movies (10)
TV (15)
- Doctor Who (2005)
- ER (1994)
- A Discovery of Witches (2018)
- Strictly Come Dancing (2004)
- V Graham Norton (2002)
- FlashForward (2009)
- Secret Service (2026)
- Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life (2016)
- Treason (2022)
- The Widow (2019)
- The Knock (1994)
- Upstairs Downstairs (2010)
- Crocodile Shoes (1994)
- Ben Hur (2010)
- Hannay (1988)
Where to start with Alex Kingston
Go to ER for the volume purchase and the best argument for her: years of Elizabeth Corday, a character allowed to be arrogant, wrong and excellent, sometimes in the same scene. Start there if you want to see acting rather than a hook.
If you came for River Song, take Doctor Who and then Doctor Who: The Husbands of River Song, which is the closest thing to a solo showcase and gets the tone right: she is playing high comedy with a straight back.
The two to seek out are older and stranger. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover is an early role in a genuinely unpleasant film, and Croupier is a cold, small, very good thriller. A Discovery of Witches is the comfortable modern option, Boudica is the one where she gets to shout on a horse, and The Widow is a decent thriller she quietly improves.