Judy Bennett

For the New Zealand historian, see Judy Bennett (historian).

Judy Bennett
Born (1943-10-22) 22 October 1943 (age 81)
Liverpool, Lancashire, England
Alma materGuildhall School of Music and Drama
OccupationActress
Known forThe Archers
SpouseCharles Collingwood
Relatives

Judy Bennett (born 22 October 1943) is a British voice actress whose career in radio began with the long-running soap opera The Archers, in which she played the role of Shula Hebden-Lloyd from 1971 to 2022, reappearing in 2023 after a break.[2][3] She played Shula's twin brother Kenton and younger sister Elizabeth before assuming the role of Shula herself.[4]

She has voiced characters in a number of cartoon series, including The Perishers (1979) and Dennis the Menace and Gnasher in the late 1990s.[5]

She attended Notre Dame Mount Pleasant High School (a girls' catholic grammar school, now St Julie's Catholic High School) in Liverpool.

Bennett studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.[2] In 1976 she married Canadian-English actor Charles Collingwood,[6] who plays Archers character Brian Aldridge. Actress Jane Collingwood (born 1979) is their daughter.[7]

  1. ^ Davies, Keri (2 January 2014). "David Troughton is the new Tony Archer". BBC Archers. Retrieved 21 February 2021.
  2. ^ a b "How We Met: Charles Collingwood and Judy Bennett". The Independent. 7 January 1996. Archived from the original on 23 March 2015. Retrieved 6 January 2013.
  3. ^ "BBC Radio 4 – The Archers – Half a century as Shula: Judy Bennett looks back at her time in The Archers". BBC. Retrieved 7 March 2023.
  4. ^ Collingwood 2011, pp. 79–80.
  5. ^ "The Voices of Judy Bennett". Behind the Voice Actors. Retrieved 3 May 2016.
  6. ^ Collingwood 2011, p. 92.
  7. ^ Collingwood 2011, p. 95.