Her acting in television and theatre; being the first woman with Down syndrome to be made an MBE and to receive an honorary degree from a UK university.
Sarah Gordy, MBE (born September 1976[1]) is a British actress who has Down syndrome. She is best known for her roles as Katie Thorne in The A Word and Ralph & Katie, Orlando Quine in Strike: The Silkworm, Lady Pamela Holland in the BBC TV series of Upstairs Downstairs, and Lucy Craddle in The Long Call. She has also acted in episodes of Call the Midwife, Holby City and Doctors. As well as these TV shows, she has acted in short films, radio dramas, commercials, and many theatre productions. In 2018 she became the first woman with Down syndrome to be made an MBE[2] and the first person with Down syndrome to receive an honorary degree from a UK university.[3]
Born in London to a British mother and American father, Sarah Gordy has lived in both the UK and US.[citation needed]
Career
Gordy gained her first professional acting job on the ITV television series, Peak Practice, as Jessica Bain in "Walls of Jericho" (Series 10, Episode 11). She subsequently landed many other TV and theatre roles.[4]
In summer 2010, Gordy found out she had been chosen for the role of Lady Pamela Holland in the new BBC One production of Upstairs Downstairs. Lady Pamela was the long-lost sister of the lead character, Sir Hallam. Part of her role was written to illustrate the 1930s attitudes to disabilities.[5] Her character was introduced in the third episode of the three-part drama. Lady Pamela became a regular character in the second series, which was televised in February 2012.
Gordy starred in episode #3.5 of Call the Midwife, which was first broadcast on BBC One on 16 February 2014. She played Sally Harper,[6] a young woman with Down's Syndrome who fell pregnant from her relationship with Jacob Milligan, a young man with cerebral palsy, played by Colin Young. Written by series creator, Heidi Thomas, the episode highlighted the treatment of people with physical and intellectual disabilities in British society in the late 1950s.
Gordy has read four "Bedtime Stories" for CBeebies and acting in the BBC Radio 4 play, Resurrection, in April 2012.[5]
In 2012, Gordy starred in the short film TimeSlip, written and directed by Suchi Chatterjee. It was made with the support of the Oyster Project in Lewes. It won the Our Story award in the Oska Bright Film Festival 2013. It also won the Our Story Class in the Australian 2014 Sit Down Shut Up & Watch (SDSW) Festival and was short-listed for the Picture This Film Festival in Calgary, Canada. Gordy co-directed and played Mary in "The Infant King"[7] for the Oyster Project.
In 2013, Gordy won a BBC Sussex and Surrey Community Heroes Award.[8] She was given the Arts Award in Lewes Town Council's Civic Awards[9] in 2014 for service to the people of Lewes and her work in the Arts, especially for disabled people living and working in Lewes.[10]
Gordy broke new ground in 2014 by playing a central character without a disability in the play Crocodiles at Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre.[11] She has done a lot of theatre work, appearing in Once We were Mothers by Lisa Evans for the New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme, and in its second production at The Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond. She co-starred in the two-person play Into the Blue at The Arcola Theatre, London. She played the leading role in a touring theatre production, Seize the Day, with Hijinx Theatre,[12] and has also toured with The Theatre Centre and Kazzum Theatre.[citation needed]
Gordy is one of the principal dancers for Culture Device Dance Project, an experimental dance company for professional dancers with Down syndrome.[13] She has performed in Germany, Macedonia, UK and Ireland. She performed a series of dance pieces at the My Perspective International Photography Competition Awards Ceremony in June 2016[14] which is held each year by the Down's Syndrome Association (DSA).
Gordy has also done a lot of modelling work. She is one of the models in the ongoing Radical Beauty Project, which seeks to change the way we see Down's Syndrome.[15] She was photographed by Rankin as part of Mencap #HereIAm campaign.[16] She worked with Richard Bailey on his award-winning After Vermeer series[17] for Shifting Perspectives for the DSA.
In November 2018, Gordy was presented with an MBE for services to the arts and people with disabilities. The MBE had been awarded as part of the Queen's Birthday Honours in June.[20] She was the first woman with Down's Syndrome to be awarded an MBE.[2] The following month, she received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Nottingham, becoming the first person with Down's Syndrome to be awarded an honorary degree by a British university.[21]
Gordy starred in Jellyfish, a new play written by Ben Weatherill, which premiered at the Bush Theatre in June 2018. Following a sold-out run at the Bush, it moved to the National Theatre in July 2019.[22] Gordy was nominated for Best West End Debut in The Stage Debut Awards 2019.[23]
In March 2019, Gordy performed "The Rite Re-evisioned" with Culture Device Dance Project and dancers of The Royal Ballet at the Royal Opera House.[24] Culture Device performed the dance again for the film The Rite, which was nominated for Fashion Film Award.[25]
In 2019, Gordy joined the cast of The A Word, as Katie, in the third season of the BBC drama series.[26] This aired in May 2020 with Ralph and Katie's storyline building up to their wedding and moving in together. In August 2020 the BBC announced that the characters would get their own spin-off series, which aired in 2022.[27]
Personal life
Gordy has a younger sister, Catherine. Their mother, Jane Gordy, acts as Sarah's drama coach,[4] travelling with her and helping with her lines.
Gordy is a celebrity ambassador for Mencap[11] and Patron of Circus Starr. In 2019, she became Patron of the Cutting Edge Theatre Company in Scotland.[citation needed]
Related Research Articles
Katrina Amy Alexandra Alexis "Katie" Price is an English media personality, model, and author. She gained recognition in the late 1990s for her glamour modelling work on Page 3 of the British tabloid The Sun, billed under the pseudonym Jordan.
Susan Hampshire, Lady Kulukundis, is an English actress known for her many television and film roles. She is a three-time Emmy Award winner, winning for The Forsyte Saga in 1970, The First Churchills in 1969, and for Vanity Fair in 1973. Her other television credits include The Pallisers (1974), The Grand (1997–98) and Monarch of the Glen (2000–2005).
Pamela Ferris is a Welsh actress. She has starred in numerous British television series, including Connie (1985), The Darling Buds of May (1991–1993), Where the Heart Is (1997–2000), Rosemary & Thyme (2003–2006), and Call the Midwife (2012–2016). For her role as Peggy Snow in Where the Heart Is she was nominated three times for Most Popular Actress at the National Television Awards.
Amanda Jacqueline Redman, is an English actress, known for her roles as Detective Superintendent Sandra Pullman in the BBC One series New Tricks (2003–2013) and as Dr. Lydia Fonseca in The Good Karma Hospital (2017–2022). She gained BAFTA TV Award nominations for At Home with the Braithwaites (2000–2003) and Tommy Cooper: Not Like That, Like This (2014). Her film roles include For Queen and Country (1988), Sexy Beast (2000) and Mike Bassett: England Manager (2001).
Siobhan Redmond is a Scottish actress, a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and known for various stage, audio and television roles such as Anne Marie in Two Doors Down.
Sarah Parish is an English actress. She is known for her work on television series including The Pillars of the Earth, Peak Practice, Hearts and Bones, Cutting It, Doctor Who, Mistresses, Merlin, Atlantis, Monroe, HBO's Industry, Stay Close, Trollied,W1A and, as the titular character, Bancroft.
Ruth Alexandra Elisabeth Jones is a Welsh actress, comedian, writer, and producer. She co-wrote and co-starred in the award-winning BBC sitcom Gavin & Stacey. She later co-wrote and starred in the Sky One comedy-drama Stella (2012-2017), for which she was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Female Comedy Performance and won the BAFTA Cymru Award for Best Screenwriter.
Georgie Glen is a Scottish actress, best known for her roles as Miss Higgins in the BBC One period drama series Call The Midwife from 2018 onwards, and of History teacher Audrey McFall in the BBC One school-based drama series Waterloo Road from 2012 to 2015.
Adrian Philip Scarborough is an English actor.
Heidi Thomas is an English screenwriter and playwright.
Stacey Jaclyn Dooley is an English television presenter, journalist, and media personality. She came to prominence in 2008 as a participant on the documentary series Blood, Sweat and T-shirts. Since then, she has made social-issue-themed television documentaries for BBC Three, concerning child labour and women in developing countries.
Genevieve Barr is an English actress and writer of stage and screen. She played the lead role in the BBC award-winning series The Silence. Having grown up speaking orally, Barr learned sign language for this role.
Jessica Raine is an English actress. She is best known for her roles as Jenny Lee in the television series Call the Midwife (2012–2014) and Verity Lambert in the television film An Adventure in Space and Time (2013). Raine portrayed Catherine Parr in Becoming Elizabeth, a historical drama featuring Elizabeth I as a teenager.
Upstairs Downstairs is a British drama series, broadcast on BBC One from 2010 to 2012, and co-produced by BBC Wales and Masterpiece. Created and written by Heidi Thomas, it is a continuation of the London Weekend Television series of the same name, which ran from 1971 to 1975 on ITV.
Thomas Jessop is a British actor. He is the first actor with Down syndrome to star in a primetime BBC drama, the first professional actor with Down syndrome to tour theatres as Hamlet, and the first to become a full voting member of BAFTA. In 2021, he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of the Arts by the University of Winchester and became an Ambassador to Mencap and to the National Down syndrome Policy Group.
The A Word is a British television drama series, based on the Israeli series Yellow Peppers. The series follows a young boy and how his family cope with the revelation that he has autism spectrum disorder. Following filming in the Lake District from October 2015, a six-part series began airing on 22 March 2016. On 26 May 2016, the BBC announced that a second series of The A Word had been commissioned. It premiered in the UK on 7 November 2017. The third series began airing on 5 May 2020.
Rosie Jones is a British comedian, writer and actress. After starting her career as a writer on panel shows, she went on to appear as a guest on The Last Leg, 8 Out of 10 Cats, 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, QI and Hypothetical. She attended the 2020 Summer Paralympics in Tokyo as a roving reporter for The Last Leg.
Leon Harrop is a British TV actor with Down's Syndrome, known for playing characters with the condition, most notably playing Ralph Wilson in The A Word (2016–2020) and its spin off series Ralph & Katie (2022).
Ralph & Katie is a British television drama series, a spin-off of The A Word, about the lives of a couple with Down syndrome. The six-part series, handled by a writing team made up predominantly of people with disabilities, began broadcast in October 2022. Disney+ picked up the programme across all of Europe, except the UK.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
