Jenna Coleman

Jenna Coleman — initially credited in Doctor Who as Jenna-Louise Coleman — played companion Clara Oswald, beginning with 2012's Asylum of the Daleks. Coleman later appeared as Bonnie in The Zygon Invasion and read AudioGO audio story The Time Machine with Michael Cochrane and Nicholas Briggs.

Prior to landing the role on Doctor Who, Coleman was perhaps best known for portraying Jasmine Thomas in and had also appeared in  as Lindsay James, the Marvel feature film  as Connie and the 2012 miniseries  as Annie Desmond.

Coleman was born in Blackpool, Lancashire. Incidentally, Blackpool is also the home town of her character, the modern Clara Oswald, as revealed in Robot of Sherwood.

In 2012, Coleman also introduced the prequel, The Great Detective, and the trailer for The Snowmen, for their broadcast during Children in Need.

Jenna-Louise Coleman first appeared on Doctor Who in Asylum of the Daleks, the only episode she shared with Matt Smith's former co-stars, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill. Coleman's character, Oswin, died at the end of the episode. She later returned as a temporary companion in the Christmas special and her character, this time named Clara, died again. Coleman then joined as a full-time companion in The Bells of Saint John, once again playing a woman called Clara who was a third incarnation of Clara Oswin Oswald. In The Name of the Doctor, she played about six additional incarnations of Clara, including one who has a brief discussion with the First Doctor (allowing Coleman, via digital editing, to share a scene with the late William Hartnell).

In June 2013, Coleman announced that she was shortening her professional name to Jenna Coleman, and was credited thus beginning with The Day of the Doctor. (She does not actually receive screen credit for the minisode Clara and the TARDIS, which was released after the announcement.)

Also in 2013, she appeared as herself in The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, and also co-starred in the three-part BBC miniseries Death Comes to Pemberley, which began the day after the broadcast of The Time of the Doctor.

Coleman continued to appear ion Doctor Who into Series 8 alongside new Twelfth Doctor Peter Capaldi, and accompanied him on the August 2014 Word Tour. During their time together on the show, Capaldi and Coleman developed a close friendship and their chemistry on screen was noted by writers and critics alike. Although Coleman intended to leave the show at the end of Series 8, lobbying by both Capaldi and Steven Moffat resulted in her deciding to stay for the Last Christmas holiday special of 2014, and then return for a third season, Series 9, which aired in the fall of 2015. She made her final regular appearance on the series in the season finale, Hell Bent, having become the longest-serving companion actress of the revival era, surpassing Karen Gillan by several episodes.

In addition to the various versions of Clara, during her time on the series Coleman also portrayed a holographic interface created by The Doctor's TARDIS in Hide and the Zygon commander Bonnie in The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion.

After filming her final scenes for Doctor Who in late August 2015, Coleman took on the lead role of Queen Victoria in the miniseries Victoria, which is scheduled to air on ITV in late 2016. During a break in filming Series 9, she shot a supporting role in the romantic drama Me Before You, which is to be released in the spring of 2016. She also continues to appear at sci-fi conventions.