Lesley Dunlop

Lesley Dunlop is an English actress who began as a child performer in the 1970s and is best known for playing Brenda Walker in the soap opera Emmerdale from 2008. Born in Newcastle upon Tyne and the daughter of the television writer Pat Dunlop, she trained at the Arts Educational Schools and moved into adult roles as Lizzie Hexam in a BBC adaptation of Our Mutual Friend in 1976, also appearing in the first series of the hospital drama Angels. She appeared with Diana Rigg and Elizabeth Taylor in the screen version of Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music (1977), and played Nora, the nurse who befriends John Hurt's character, in David Lynch's The Elephant Man (1980). Her other films include Roman Polanski's Tess (1979), the horror anthology The Monster Club (1981) and the television film Thirteen at Dinner (1985) with Peter Ustinov. On television she starred in May to December and Where the Heart Is.