About

Kay Adshead is a RADA-trained actress whose career spans five decades of British television, film and theatre — from leading roles in classic television drama to new writing, experimental theatre and some of the best-loved comedy series of the 1980s and 1990s.

Born in Manchester, Kay was a child actress with the Stretford Children's Theatre before training at RADA, where she won the Emile Littler Award for outstanding talent and the Bryan Mosley Award for stage fighting. She graduated in 1975 and moved directly into leading television and stage roles.

Kay came to national attention as Catherine Earnshaw in the BBC's 1978 serialisation of Wuthering Heights, playing Cathy opposite Ken Hutchison's Heathcliff across five episodes filmed on the Yorkshire moors. Her leading screen roles include Beryl Stapleton in the BBC's The Hound of the Baskervilles, Linda in Mike Leigh's The Kiss of Death for Play for Today, and Sue in Acceptable Levels, Film on Four's acclaimed drama set in Troubles-era Belfast. A gift for comedy brought repeated collaborations with Victoria Wood — from Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV to her sitcom dinnerladies — alongside appearances in One Foot in the Grave, A Bit of Fry and Laurie and The Bill, and continuing roles in Mother's Ruin and the Channel 5 serial Family Affairs.

Kay's theatre work ranges across the National Theatre, the Old Vic — where she appeared in Touched and White Suit Blues, both directed by Richard Eyre — the Royal Court, Lyric Hammersmith, Royal Exchange Manchester, Bristol Old Vic, Nottingham Playhouse, Sheffield Crucible and Liverpool Playhouse. Alongside established repertoire she has been a constant presence in new and experimental work, creating leading roles in premieres at the Bush, the ICA, Soho Theatre, the Drill Hall and Battersea Arts Centre, in work ranging from Shakespeare to physically demanding devised performance.

Alongside her acting career, Kay is a writer, theatre maker, filmmaker and producer, and the founder of the political theatre company Mama Quilla Productions. That wider creative practice has remained closely connected to performance — and acting continues as a distinct strand of her work.