2005–2012: Early career Coleman landed the part of
Jasmine Thomas in
Emmerdale in 2005. At the 2009 British Soap Awards, she was nominated for the "Best Actress", "Sexiest Female", and "Best Dramatic Performance" awards. She received a nomination for the "Best Actress" award from the TV Choice Awards. In May 2009, it was announced that Coleman would be joining
BBC school-based drama series
Waterloo Road, as "hard girl"
Lindsay James. As she was 23 at the time of her casting, Coleman found the experience of playing a schoolgirl "surreal". After the show ended, Coleman went six months without acting work, and at one point applied to
RADA, which was unsuccessful. She moved to Los Angeles, to try her luck, and spent her days going to auditions. In 2011, she made her feature film debut with a small role in
Captain America: The First Avenger. In December 2010, it was announced that Coleman would be playing Susan Brown in a
BBC Four television adaptation of the
John Braine novel
Room at the Top. The adaptation was originally intended to air in April 2011, but this was cancelled due to a rights dispute between the production company and Braine's estate. The dispute was resolved by 2012, and the show aired in two parts on 26 and 27 September 2012. That same year, Coleman was cast as Rosie in
Stephen Poliakoff's original drama series
Dancing on the Edge, which follows the fortunes of a black jazz band in the 1930s. The show aired on
BBC Two in February 2013. The three episodes were shown on
BBC One during Christmas 2013.
2012–2017: Doctor Who and Coleman in 2015 On 21 March 2012,
Doctor Who producer
Steven Moffat confirmed at a press conference that Coleman would play the
companion of the
Eleventh Doctor (
Matt Smith). Moffat chose her for the role because she worked the best alongside Smith and could talk faster than he could. She auditioned for the role in secret, under the pretence of auditioning for
Men on Waves (an anagram for "Woman Seven": she would first appear in the show's
seventh series). Although originally announced as beginning her run as companion in the Christmas special in 2012, Coleman made a surprise appearance on 1 September 2012 in the
first episode of the seventh series as Oswin Oswald, a guest character. Coleman subsequently debuted as a series regular in the Christmas special episode "
The Snowmen" as Victorian governess and barmaid Clara Oswin Oswald. In that episode, Coleman also played a third version of the character, a resident of twenty-first-century London simply named Clara Oswald. Beginning in "
The Bells of Saint John", this version begins her travels as the Doctor's regular companion, She was first credited on screen as Jenna Coleman in
Doctor Who Live: The Next Doctor, which aired on 4 August 2013. In the 2014 Christmas special episode "Last Christmas", it was revealed that Coleman would remain in the role of Clara for Series 9. However, the ninth series was her last, as Coleman had decided to leave the show to take on a role as
Queen Victoria in an
ITV production. She returned to the show for Twelfth Doctor's last episode "
Twice Upon a Time" where she made a cameo appearance; that episode,
Doctor Who 2017 Christmas special, aired the same evening as the first Christmas special for
Victoria.
2015–2021: Victoria and other work In 2015, Coleman was cast in ITV's eight-part drama following the reign of the British monarch and Empress of India, Queen Victoria. She confessed that she was not fully informed about
Victorian history, but researched the role. When interviewed for BBC Radio 4's ''Woman's Hour
, Coleman expressed her admiration for the monarch. She argued that this role meant she was able to break out of her supposed "box" as a northern working-class character that Emmerdale
put her in. and in September 2016, ITV renewed Victoria'' for a second series. A Christmas special for 2017 was also commissioned and a third series was announced in December 2017. In 2017, Coleman became the narrator for a
Royal Caribbean UK advertising campaign. On 8 January 2018, Coleman was confirmed to play Joanna in the four-part BBC drama
The Cry, an adaptation of the 2013 novel by
Helen FitzGerald. In 2019, Coleman starred as Annie in the
Old Vic Theatre's production of
All My Sons, which ran from 13 April to 8 June and included a cinema screening via
National Theatre Live on 14 May. In February 2019, it was announced that Coleman would make a guest appearance in an episode from series five of the dark comedy series
Inside No. 9, with an expected broadcast date later in the year. Series five returned to the screen on 3 February 2020. On 11 May 2019, in an interview with
Graham Norton on his
BBC Radio 2 program, Coleman indicated her intent to return to
Victoria for a fourth series should it be renewed by ITV, but stated that the show will be taking "a bit of a breather" before production resumes. In the same year 2019, Coleman was selected for the role of Marie-Andrée Leclerc in the
Netflix and
BBC drama
The Serpent, a dramatisation of the life of convicted serial killer
Charles Sobhraj. Production of
The Serpent began in
Bangkok in September 2019 and continued into 2020, with an expected BBC broadcast later in the year. As with most other film and television production, work on
The Serpent was suspended in March 2020 due to the
COVID-19 pandemic. Filming resumed on 17 August in the UK and was completed on 28 August. Due to the delay in filming, the broadcast date for
The Serpent was moved to 2021. It premiered on 1 January 2021 on
BBC One. During the COVID-19 pandemic, from April 2020 Coleman participated in
The Remote Read, a planned series of online drama performances to raise funds for theatrical workers left unemployed by the pandemic. The first production under this banner, an adaptation of
Tom Stoppard's
A Separate Peace (1966), was transmitted via the
Zoom videoconferencing platform on 2 May 2020. Coleman also recorded the short story
Pressures, Residential by Philip Hensher, in support of
UNICEF UK, as well as
The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies by
Beatrix Potter, as part of a collection of audiobooks in
Beatrix Potter: The Complete Tales. She then returned as Melia in Xenoblade Chronicles 3'' in 2022, where she is depicted as Queen of the Keves Nation. Coleman headed Boots UK's 2021 Christmas ad campaign, "Bags of Joy". Her character, Joy, is shown to give Christmas presents to friends and family out of a bag that is bigger on the inside. In May 2021, Coleman was cast as
Johanna Constantine, the great-great-great-grandmother of
John Constantine in DC Comics'
The Sandman TV series. The series debuted on
Netflix in August 2022, when it was revealed that Coleman was playing two roles; the aforementioned version of Johanna and her present day descendant of the same name. This new interpretation led to calls for a spin-off series. Coleman reprised the role in the series' second season.
2022–present In 2021, initial press releases for a possible historical drama series,
The War Rooms, stated that Coleman was attached to portray
Joan Bright, whose eponymous autobiography the series was to be based on; as of 2025, no such production has moved forward. In February 2021, Coleman was cast in the dark comedy
Klokkenluider. Filming began on 28 February in East Sussex, for a three-week shoot in a COVID-secure "bubble". The film premiered at the
66th BFI London Film Festival on 8 October 2022. Coleman returned to the West End stage beginning in January 2023, co-starring with
Aidan Turner in a revival of the 2015 Sam Steiner play,
Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons, initially with a nine-week run at the
Harold Pinter Theatre in London, followed by runs in Manchester and Brighton up until April. That same year she played Liv Taylor in the
Amazon Prime thriller
Wilderness, based on B.E. Jones' novel of the same name, alongside
Oliver Jackson-Cohen. The series was streamed on Amazon Prime beginning on 15 September 2023. She also appeared as Bo in Jamie Childs' thriller film,
Jackdaw, reuniting once again with Jackson-Cohen. The film debuted at
Fantastic Fest in
Austin, Texas in September 2023. Coleman next starred as police detective Ember Manning in the 2024
BBC One crime drama series
The Jetty; she also acted as executive producer on the series. ==Personal life==