Gemma Whelan returned to screens this week as DS Sarah Collins for the third season of ITV’s The Tower.
Set in south London and based on a trilogy of novels by former policewoman Kate London, the stories centre on a high-rise block where serious crime is endemic.
Three gangs vie for control, with the teenage delivery boys all carrying zombie knives and DS Collins investigating a brutal murder.
And while fans of the series may also know Gemma, 43, as Yara Greyjoy in Game Of Thrones, her career beginnings may come as a surprise to some.
From training as a yoga teacher to battling an eating disorder and welcoming two children with her husband Gerry Howell. Here MailOnline takes a look at her life.
Gemma Whelan returned to screens this week as DS Sarah Collins for the third season of ITV’s The Tower (pictured in November)
Set in south London and based on a trilogy of novels by former policewoman Kate London, the stories centre on a high-rise block where serious crime is endemic
The actress was born in Leeds, growing up in the Midland’s where she went on to train as a yoga teacher ‘because my mum said I’d need something to fall back on – all the faith!’ she told The Daily Mail’s You Magazine last year.
As a teenager, she became anorexic and was hospitalised. She has previously described overcoming the eating disorder as her ‘greatest achievement’ and said the experience shaped her personality.
Speaking to The Times, Gemma said: ‘It’s part of my life. If it can help one or two people maybe feel it’s not hopeless and you can get better, then yeah, I’ll share it.
‘I am not so private I wouldn’t talk about that. Because it really shaped me. It formed so much of my life and the way I live my life and my personality and my approach to things.’
Her career began in comedy, having done stand-up as a module on her performing arts degree at Middlesex University.
As a graduate she would sit down every Monday with an industry printout of small acting roles and send letters and photographs to every one: ‘From my little flat in Greenwich, where I lived in the lounge – me and two boys were sharing it and we couldn’t afford a three-bed,’ she told You Magazine.
Gemma eventually went on to star as Marian, sister of Anne Lister, in the 19th-century drama Gentleman Jack, and Kate in Upstart Crow, the BBC2 sitcom about Shakespeare, after being cast in Game Of Thrones in 2011.
And while fans of the series may also know Gemma, 43, as Yara Greyjoy in Game Of Thrones, her career beginnings may come as a surprise to some
The actress was born in Leeds, growing up in the Midland’s where she went on to train as a yoga teacher ‘because my mum said I’d need something to fall back on’ she told You Magazine (pictured in 2022)
She shares two children with her writer and comedian husband Gerry, who works part-time in patient liaison at London’s Maudsley Hospital (pictured in 2016)
She shares two children with her writer and comedian husband Gerry, who works part-time in patient liaison at London’s Maudsley Hospital.
Gemma previously has explained how her dad had begged her not to have children, just before he died of cancer in 2016.
‘He said, “Will you promise me not to have children?” But only because of the state of the world that I would be bringing them into. I mean, the world he left behind was peachy compared to now.
‘Seven years ago, Brexit hadn’t been finalised, there was still a bit of hope and decent weather; a relative utopia. But I fully agreed with him. Then he passed away and the urge to make my own children was so strong. And just over a year later Frances arrived.
‘It is strange how it happened. Gerry and I had been together for years, quite content, like, “Guess we don’t need children, we’re having fun, aren’t we? This is fine,”‘ she told You Magazine.
‘But you grow up quickly when you lose a parent. It’s a seismic shift. I wanted to make my own family.’
The couple rushed through a wedding when she was five months pregnant, Gemma admitted. Their daughter, Frances, six, was born a few months later, joined by brother Freddie in 2021 (pictured in 2020)
The first series of gritty crime drama The Tower began in 2021 and was praised for the dark human storylines
The couple rushed through a wedding when she was five months pregnant, Gemma admitted.
Their daughter, Frances, now six, was born a few months later, joined by her brother Freddie in 2021.
The first series of gritty crime drama The Tower began in 2021 and was praised for the dark human storylines that ran alongside the investigation into the deaths of a young woman and a police officer who had fallen from a London tower block.
The show centres around Farlow police station, where we see DS Sarah Collins, played by Whelan, given the unpopular job of investigating her own colleagues after a police officer and a young girl fell to their deaths.
