Who Is Amanda Redman? The Inspiring Life Story of Joan Redman’s Daughter

Amanda Redman has spent five decades charming British television audiences, yet many viewers still wonder about the woman behind the roles of Detective Superintendent Sandra Pullman and Dr Lydia Fonseca. Born to Ronald and Joan Redman in Brighton in 1957, she overcame a painful childhood accident to become one of Britain’s most recognisable and respected actresses. Her career spans gritty crime dramas, warm family comedies and acclaimed film work, while her personal story includes a famous acting family, two marriages and a daughter who followed her into the profession. This article looks closely at Amanda Redman’s early life, her rise through British theatre and television, her relationship with her mother Joan, and the milestones that have defined her remarkable career.

Amanda Redman: Quick Bio Table

Category	Details
Full name	Amanda Jacqueline Redman
Known as	Amanda Redman, MBE
Date of birth	12 August 1957
Place of birth	Brighton, Sussex, England
Father	Ronald Jack Redman (1929 to 1980)
Mother	Joan Beryl Redman, née Herrington (1927 to 2014)
Sibling	Tim Redman (died 2008)
Education	Bristol Old Vic Theatre School
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1975 to present
Known for	New Tricks, The Good Karma Hospital, At Home with the Braithwaites
First husband	Robert Glenister (married 1984, divorced 1992)
Daughter	Emily Glenister
Second husband	Damian Schnabel (married 2010)
Honour	MBE, awarded 2012
Estimated net worth	Approximately five million dollars

Early Life and Family Background

Amanda Jacqueline Redman was born on 12 August 1957 in Brighton, Sussex, England. Her father, Ronald Jack Redman, came from Camberwell in London, while her mother, Joan Beryl Redman, was born in Quetta, in what was then British India, as the daughter of a soldier in the British Indian Army. The couple settled in Brighton, where Amanda grew up alongside her older brother, Tim.

When Amanda was just eighteen months old, she suffered severe burns after a pan of boiling soup scalded her. The accident left her badly injured and required years of hospital treatment, including skin grafts, and she still carries a noticeable scar on her left arm today. The family later relocated briefly to South Africa for her father’s work, but they returned to England because they objected to the apartheid system there.

Acting ran in the family long before Amanda picked up the craft herself. She is the niece of Joyce Redman, an Oscar-nominated stage and screen actress, which gave young Amanda early exposure to the theatrical world. Her father died in 1980 at the age of 51, when Amanda was only 23, and her brother Tim passed away from pneumonia in 2008.

Joan Redman: Her Mother’s Quiet Influence

Joan Beryl Redman, born Joan Herrington in 1927, lived until 2014 and remained a steady presence throughout her daughter’s life and career. Amanda has spoken warmly about her upbringing and has credited both her parents with instilling compassion, resilience and a strong work ethic in her from an early age.

In 2004, Amanda took part in the BBC genealogy programme Who Do You Think You Are?, which allowed her to dig deeper into her mother’s side of the family. Through the research, she discovered that Joan had a half-brother named Cyril, who had been born before their grandmother married and was subsequently sent away to live with relatives. Amanda later managed to track down Cyril’s daughter and meet a previously unknown branch of her family.

Amanda has also described her bond with her own daughter as a reflection of the closeness she shared with Joan, telling one interviewer that she and her daughter remain tightly connected even though their relationship is that of mother and daughter rather than simple friendship. This thread of strong maternal bonds runs clearly through three generations of the Redman family.

Education and Theatrical Training

Amanda trained at the prestigious Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, one of the most respected drama schools in the United Kingdom and a launching pad for numerous well-known British performers. Her time there gave her the grounding in classical and contemporary theatre technique that would support her long career across stage, film and television.

Interestingly, her daughter Emily would later study at the very same institution, continuing a family tradition that began with Amanda decades earlier. The Bristol Old Vic Theatre School remains closely associated with the Redman-Glenister acting dynasty as a result.

Career Beginnings

Amanda began working as an actress in 1975 and spent the following decade building experience through television roles. She appeared in the popular police procedural The Bill, an important training ground for many British character actors of her generation, and she featured in the comedy drama series EI C.I.D. during this period.

Her film career also began to take shape in the late 1980s. She appeared in the Cold War thriller The Fourth Protocol in 1987 and followed it with a role in For Queen and Country in 1988, a drama exploring the experiences of a British soldier readjusting to civilian life.

Throughout the early to mid-1990s, Amanda continued building a varied resume across British television. She starred in the first two series of the police drama Dangerfield in 1995 and took on a role in the long-running Scottish crime series Taggart the same year, steadily establishing herself as a dependable and versatile performer.

Rise to Fame: At Home with the Braithwaites

The year 2000 marked a major turning point in Amanda’s career. She appeared opposite Ray Winstone in the acclaimed film Sexy Beast, playing Deedee Dove, a role that brought her work to a wider cinematic audience.

That same year, she landed the role of Alison Braithwaite in ITV’s At Home with the Braithwaites, a comedy drama created by Sally Wainwright about a mother whose life changes dramatically after winning the lottery. The series ran for four series between 2000 and 2003 and became one of ITV’s most talked about dramas of the era.

Her performance earned her a BAFTA TV Award nomination for Best Actress in 2001, followed by a National Television Award nomination for Most Popular Actress in 2003. The show cemented Amanda as a leading lady capable of carrying a primetime series.

New Tricks and Mainstream Stardom

In 2003, Amanda took on the role that would define her career for a decade: Detective Superintendent Sandra Pullman in the BBC One series New Tricks. The show followed a team of retired police detectives brought back to investigate cold cases within the fictional Unsolved Crime and Open Case Squad.

Amanda played Pullman for ten years, from 2003 until 2013, opposite co-stars including Dennis Waterman, Alun Armstrong and James Bolam. The role brought her into millions of British homes each week and made New Tricks one of the BBC’s most consistently popular crime dramas of the 2000s.

Her work on the series earned further recognition, including a TV Quick Award nomination for Best Actress in 2007 and a Crime Thriller Award nomination the following year. She eventually left the show in 2013 to pursue other acting opportunities, a decision that echoed her character’s own arc within the drama.

Film Roles and Other Notable Work

Beyond her television work, Amanda built a respectable body of film credits. She took a comedic turn in Mike Bassett: England Manager in 2001, playing opposite Ricky Tomlinson in the football mockumentary that became something of a cult favourite in Britain.

In 2014, she earned a BAFTA TV Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Tommy Cooper: Not Like That, Like This, a biographical drama about the legendary comedian. The following year, she played Jackie Rose in The Trials of Jimmy Rose, a performance that won her the Best Actress award at the New York Festivals International TV and Film Awards in 2016.

These roles demonstrated Amanda’s range beyond crime drama, showing her comfort with comedy, biography and character-driven storytelling across different formats.

The Good Karma Hospital and Recent Projects

From 2017, Amanda starred as Dr Lydia Fonseca in The Good Karma Hospital, a drama set in a struggling hospital on the Indian coast. The series, which ran across several seasons, gave her the chance to play a strong-willed English doctor navigating both professional pressure and personal history in an unfamiliar country.

More recently, Amanda returned to British screens in Murder Before Evensong, a Channel 5 drama based on the bestselling novel by Reverend Richard Coles. Set in the 1980s, the six-part series stars Matthew Lewis as a rector caught up in a murder investigation, with Amanda playing his widowed mother.

Her continued presence in high-profile British drama, more than fifty years after she began acting, reflects the lasting respect she commands within the industry.

Awards and Recognition

Amanda’s contribution to British drama has been formally recognised on several occasions throughout her career. In 2012, she was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire, commonly known as an MBE, in recognition of her services to drama and to charitable work.

Her nominations and wins span more than two decades, from her early BAFTA nomination for At Home with the Braithwaites through to her New York Festivals win for The Trials of Jimmy Rose in 2016. Together, these honours reflect a career built on consistency rather than a single breakout moment.

Personal Life: Marriages and Daughter Emily

Amanda married fellow actor Robert Glenister in 1984. Glenister, known for his work in Hustle and Spooks, shared her passion for theatre and screen acting, and the couple had one daughter together, Emily, before divorcing in 1992 after eight years of marriage. Despite the split, the pair reportedly remained on good terms.

Robert Glenister’s brother is the actor Philip Glenister, well known for playing DCI Gene Hunt in Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes. Amanda has been credited with encouraging her former brother-in-law to pursue acting, adding another layer to the family’s deep ties within British entertainment.

Emily Glenister followed both her parents into the profession and trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, the same school where Amanda studied. She appeared alongside her mother in an episode of New Tricks titled Only the Brave, giving audiences a rare on-screen glimpse of the mother-daughter pair working together.

In 2010, Amanda married Damian Schnabel, a former mobile phone designer she had met back in 1999. The couple dated for several years before marrying, and Schnabel is around fifteen years younger than his wife.

Theatre Work and Community Involvement

Away from film and television, Amanda has remained closely involved with grassroots theatre. She founded and now leads the Artists Theatre School, where she directs an annual production staged at The Questors Theatre in Ealing, one of London’s best-known community theatre venues.

Since 2018, she has also supported the Brighton Open Air Theatre, a fitting connection given that Brighton is her home town. This ongoing commitment to nurturing new talent and supporting local arts organisations sits alongside her screen career and reflects a genuine investment in the wider theatrical community.

Net Worth and Lifestyle

Amanda Redman’s net worth has been estimated at around five million dollars, largely built through decades of consistent television, film and theatre work. As with most celebrity net worth estimates, this figure is drawn from public reporting rather than any official disclosure and should be treated as an approximate guide.

Standing at around five feet seven inches tall, Amanda has largely kept her personal finances and day-to-day lifestyle out of the public eye, preferring instead to let her professional work speak for itself.

Conclusion

Amanda Redman’s career reflects a rare combination of longevity, versatility and quiet dedication to her craft. From the early hardship of a childhood accident to decades of celebrated television and film roles, she has built a body of work rooted in the values instilled by her parents, Ronald and Joan Redman. With her daughter Emily carrying the family’s acting tradition forward and her own continued presence on British screens, Amanda Redman remains one of the country’s most enduring and respected performers.

Frequently Asked Questions About Amanda Redman

1. Who is Amanda Redman?

Amanda Redman is an English actress best known for playing Detective Superintendent Sandra Pullman in New Tricks and Dr Lydia Fonseca in The Good Karma Hospital.

2. Who are Amanda Redman’s parents?

Her father was Ronald Jack Redman, and her mother was Joan Beryl Redman, née Herrington, who was born in Quetta, India, to a British Indian Army soldier.

3. How old is Amanda Redman?

Amanda Redman was born on 12 August 1957, making her 69 years old as of 2026.

4. Does Amanda Redman have children?

Yes, she has one daughter, Emily Glenister, from her marriage to actor Robert Glenister. Emily also became an actress.

5. Was Amanda Redman married before?

Yes, she was previously married to actor Robert Glenister from 1984 to 1992. She later married Damian Schnabel in 2010.

6. What is Amanda Redman famous for?

She is best known for her decade-long role in New Tricks, as well as for At Home with the Braithwaites, The Good Karma Hospital and the film Sexy Beast.

7. Did Amanda Redman receive any awards?

She has received several award nominations, including two BAFTA TV Award nods, and won Best Actress at the New York Festivals International TV and Film Awards in 2016.

8. Is Amanda Redman related to any other actors?

Yes, she is the niece of Oscar-nominated actress Joyce Redman, and her former brother-in-law is actor Philip Glenister of Life on Mars fame.

9. Where did Amanda Redman train as an actress?

She trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, the same drama school her daughter Emily later attended.

10. What is Amanda Redman doing now?

She continues to act in British television, recently appearing in the Channel 5 drama Murder Before Evensong, and she runs the Artists Theatre School in Ealing.