Claire Price
The stage is where Price actually works. Her theatre credits are the bulk of the career and the screen list is the visible remainder, and what that remainder shows is a very particular kind of English working actor: the person who arrives inside the long-running detective and period series that keep British television on air.
She played DS Siobhan Clarke in Rebus across its 2006 and 2007 run, which is the closest thing here to a lead. She has passed through Midsomer and an Agatha Christie's Poirot episode, played Joy Bradshaw in The Coroner, appeared in Rosemary and Thyme and Dalziel and Pascoe, and played Miriam Brindsley across the 2015 and 2016 run of Home Fires. Add The Whistle-Blower in 2001 and The Capture in 2022 and you have the shape of it.
The film parts are small and sensibly chosen: a teacher in Hereafter, Laura Ainslie in The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Lynda in the 2025 feature Last Days. She is the actress you cast when a scene needs somebody credible and unshowy standing in it, which is steady employment and only occasionally a showcase.
Movies (3)
TV (4)
Where to start with Claire Price
Rebus first. Siobhan Clarke gives her something to build across episodes rather than resolve inside one, and the Edinburgh series is bleaker and better written than the cosier detective shows she has passed through.
Home Fires is the other real showcase, a wartime home-front drama where Miriam Brindsley carries emotional weight rather than plot mechanics, and it suits her exactly. The Coroner is lighter, a seaside procedural, and perfectly good on those terms. The films are all small: The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Hereafter use her for a handful of scenes each, and Last Days is the most recent. Two of her better-known guest turns, in Poirot and in Midsomer, are not among the credits listed here, which is a pity, because that strand is a fair chunk of the work.