British actress and television personality Amanda Holden, born February 16, 1971 in Bishop’s Waltham, Hampshire, England, found work steadily in her early 20s, including a run on the venerable soap opera EastEnders. Holden’s celebrity expanded greatly from 1998-2001 when she starred in a run of successful television comedies including Kiss Me Kate, The Grimleys, and Hearts and Bones. She followed that with a successful multi-year run in the program Cutting It. She had a stage hit in a 2004 revival of Thoroughly Modern Millie that earned her a Laurence Olivier Theater Award nomination for Best Actress in a Musical. She became one of the original judge’s on Britain’s Got Talent in 2007. She originated the part of Princess Fiona in the British production of Shrek the Musical in 2011. Over the next decade she hosted programs such as A Night of Heroes: The Sun Military Awards, This Morning, and Give a Pet a Home, and had a prominent part in the popular drama series Wild at Heart. In 2020 she released a cover of “Over the Rainbow” to raise money for the National Health Service.
