Ashley Jensen

Actor

• Born: August 11, 1969
• Place of Birth: Annan, Scotland

Contribution: Ashley Jensen is an Emmy-nominated Scottish actor best known for her roles as Maggie Jacobs on the British sitcom Extras (2005–2007), as Christina McKinney on the American sitcom Ugly Betty (2006–2010), as the title character in the British sitcom Agatha Raisin (2014–2022), and as DI Ruth Calder in Shetland (2023–).

Background

Ashley Samantha Jensen was born on August 11, 1969, in Annan, Scotland, to Ivar and Margaret Jensen. After her father left the family, her grandparents and her mother, a special education instructor, raised her.

Jensen knew by her early teenage years that she wanted to become an actor. When she was sixteen, she pressured her mother into allowing her to study creative arts at the National Youth Theatre in London. After some persuading, her mother allowed her to go to the school. Following her time in England, Jensen returned to Scotland to study drama and speech at Queen Margaret University, located just outside Edinburgh. After graduation, she set her sights on theater as the initial medium for her craft.

Career

Jensen joined various theater companies around Scotland, including Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre, Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre, and 7:84, a politically motivated theater troupe that used the medium of the stage to advocate for leftist social change. Jensen found the greatest success with the latter troupe, as she toured Scotland and performed in productions such as the 1941 Bertolt Brecht play Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui (The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui) in 1991, costarring David Tennant. She and Tennant would also work together in a Royal Exchange Theatre production of King Lear in 1999.

The national success that Jensen earned from the stage led her to pursue television work. She made her small screen debut in 1990 with a guest appearance on the BBC’s City Lights. More television spots came two years later on the comedy series Rab C. Nesbitt, and when the show’s cast embarked on a theater tour of the United Kingdom, Jensen was invited to join them.

As she continued to climb the entertainment ladder, Jensen began landing increasingly more prominent roles in British television series. In 1994, she had recurring roles on the comedy shows May to December and Roughnecks. She continued to play the role of Heather on Roughnecks for its second season the following year. As the 1990s progressed, Jensen continued to appear in various short-lived and little-seen television shows. Meanwhile, she branched out into drama with guest spots and recurring roles on Casualty (1996, 2004), Dangerfield (1997), and the soap opera EastEnders (2000).

Jensen stayed busy into the new millennium. From 2001 to 2003, she had a recurring role on Clocking Off, which examines the lives of textile factory employees, and in 2003, she had recurring stints on the crime show Silent Witness and the medical drama Sweet Medicine.

In 2005, Jensen’s career took an upswing when she was cast in British comedian and actor Ricky Gervais’s sitcom Extras. The show revolves around the lives of Andy Millman (Gervais) and his best friend, Maggie Jacobs (Jensen), who are film extras struggling to make it big in the industry. Extras was a worldwide hit, earning heaps of praise for Gervais’s own brand of social satire and comedy, previously displayed in his 2001–2003 series The Office.

Because Jensen had a starring role on the show, earning second billing to Gervais, a wider audience saw her talents, and critics praised her performances as the airheaded and inept Maggie. Jensen’s work on the show’s two-year run garnered her multiple award nominations, and in 2008, after the show had aired its feature-length finale in December 2007, Jensen was nominated for an Emmy Award for outstanding supporting actress in a miniseries or movie.

The success of Extras catapulted Jensen to stardom, and by 2006, she was starring with Patrick Stewart in the sci-fi miniseries Eleventh Hour. Later that year, Jensen moved to Los Angeles, where she was cast in a main role on the American sitcom Ugly Betty, an adaptation of the popular Colombian series Yo soy Betty, la fea about Betty Suarez, a nondescript young woman attempting to succeed in the fashion industry. Jensen played Christina McKinney, Betty’s friend and fellow fashion designer.

Though Jensen found steady work on the show, she was forced to leave after three seasons when shooting moved from Los Angeles to New York. The show would end after its fourth season, in 2010. Later in 2009, Jensen was cast as a regular on CBS’s Accidentally on Purpose, which was canceled after one season in 2010. Film work followed with Jensen landing voice roles in the animated films How to Train Your Dragon (2010)—and its 2019 sequel, How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World—and Gnomeo and Juliet (2011).

Jensen also received parts in the historical comedy Hysteria and in the television film The Reckoning, both released in 2011. In 2012, she lent her voice to a pirate character in the animated film The Pirates! Band of Misfits, which is based on the comedic book series by Gideon Defoe. She also returned to the stage that year—though 2012 marked her first appearance in a production on London’s West End—playing Hannah in Alan Ayckbourn’s 1984 comedy A Chorus of Disapproval. Jensen then played Sarah Paradise in the 2013 English television comedy series Love and Marriage.

In 2014, Jensen scored her first lead role in a television series, that of the title character in Agatha Raisin, a crime comedy-drama about a PR executive turned amateur detective, based on a book series by M. C. Beaton. She also had a supporting role from 2015 to 2019 in the Britcom Catastrophe.

Jensen starred in the BBC miniseries Love, Lies & Records in 2017 and, two years later, once again appeared alongside Ricky Gervais in the Netflix comedy series After Life. Her next big part came in 2022, when she was cast as the new lead in the BBC crime drama Shetland. That same year, she continued her film career with an appearance in the Netflix film Christmas on Mistletoe Farm.

Impact

Through many award-nominated comedic performances in sitcoms from Extras to Shetland, Jensen has proven herself worthy of standing among the best in comedy acting. Her powers of deadpan comedic delivery have placed her in high demand for both television and film, and Jensen stands as a unique talent in her field.

Personal Life

Jensen married actor Terence Beesley in 2007. They had a son, Francis Jonathan Beesley, in 2009. Terence Beesley died in 2017. Jensen subsequently married actor Kenny Doughty in 2023.

Bibliography

"Ashley Jensen." IMDb, 2024, www.imdb.com/name/nm0421332. Accessed 20 Sept. 2024.

Jensen, Ashley. “Ashley Jensen Interview.” Interview by Bernadette McNulty. Telegraph. Telegraph Media, 19 Sept. 2012. Web. 14 Aug. 2013.

Jensen, Ashley. “Ashley Jensen: ‘It Was Liberating—Like Being a Child Doing a Funny Voice in Your Bedroom.’” Interview by Hermione Hoby. Guardian. Guardian News, 28 May 2011. Web. 14 Aug. 2013.

Jensen, Ashley. “Extras Star Ashley Jensen Tells HuffPostUK Why It’s Good to be Home from LA: ‘It’s Not a City to Be Old In.’” Interview by Caroline Frost. HuffPost Entertainment. AOL (UK), 5 Jan. 2013. Web. 18 July 2013.

Jensen, Ashley. “Hollywood Calling.” Interview by Phil Hogan. Observer. Guardian News, 9 Sept. 2006. Web. 14 Aug. 2013.

Jensen, Ashley. Interview. “Ashley Jensen: ‘Ricky and Extras Changed My Life.” Independent. Independent.co.uk, 20 Nov. 2009. Web. 14 Aug. 2013.

Williams, Andrew. “Life After Extras: Ashley Jensen Takes on Hollywood.” Metro. Associated Newspapers, 19 Dec. 2012. Web. 14 Aug. 2013.