Crissy Rock

From her iconic first performance in Ken Loach's 1994 festival favorite "Ladybird Ladybird," English actress Crissy Rock has proved herself an indelible talent. In Loach's film, based on a true story, Rock plays unmarried mother Maggie Conlan, who was a victim of multiple abusive relationships and a combatant against the governmental bureaucracy that wrenched her children from her. Rock won Best Actress honors at the Berlin International Film Festival, the Sant Jordi Awards, and the London Critics Circle Film Awards for her harrowing portrayal of the character. In 1997, she joined writer/director Carine Adler for the sexually charged familial drama "Under the Skin," which won the International Critics' Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. Dramatizing the contentious Liverpool Dockers Strike, "Dockers" cast Rock as Jean Walton, a schoolteacher and proponent for workers' rights. In 2007, Rock landed a role as Janey York, persnickety resort proprietress on "Benidorm," a sitcom set in the popular Spanish tourist destination. The series ran until 2011, and Rock appeared in all but one of its 28 episodes. Still no stranger to cinemagoers, in 2009 she played the owner of a chip shop in Emmy-winner Brian Percival's drama about a 14-year-old father, "A Boy Called Dad."