Monica Dolan is a BAFTA and Olivier Award winning actor whose work spans television, film and stage. Monica was born in March 1969 into an Irish family and has a sister Gabrielle. She studied drama at the Guildhall School in London, graduating in 1991 and soon afterwards went into television. A supremely versatile character actress, she has tended to specialize in stunning portrayals of the darker side of life, as real-life stalker Maria Marchese in U Be Dead (2009), demure but deadly Miss Gilchrist in the superior Poirot adaptation Poirot: After the Funeral (2006) and, particularly, as serial killer Rosemary West in Appropriate Adult (2011) for which she, along with fellow Guildhall graduate Dominic West, deservedly received a BAFTA award.

2011