After training at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, she starred in the video for Simply Red's Holding Back the Years, before making her professional stage debut in Moving Pictures, by Stephen Lowe, at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds in 1985. After making her screen debut in the British production Mona Lisa opposite Bob Hoskins in 1986, she made her Hollywood screen debut in the Sigourney Weaver film Gorillas in the Mist: The Story of Dian Fossey in 1988. She also played alongside Keith Barron and Annette Crosbie in the 1989 TV series Take Me Home.
