Haydn Gwynne is an English actress. She was nominated for the 1992 BAFTA TV Award for Best Light Entertainment Performance for the comedy series Drop the Dead Donkey (1990–1991), and won the 2009 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical for her role in the Broadway production of Billy Elliot the Musical. She is also a four-time Olivier Award nominee. Her other television roles include Peak Practice (1999–2000), Merseybeat (2001–2002), and playing Camilla in The Windsors (2016–2020). Personal life Born in Hurstpierpoint, Sussex to father Guy Thomas Hayden-Gwynne, she played county level tennis before studying sociology at the University of Nottingham, and is fluent in French and Italian. She then took a five-year lectureship in Italy at the University of Rome La Sapienza, where she taught English as a foreign language. Gwynne lives in London with her partner, Jungian psychotherapist Jason Phipps, and their two sons. She also undertakes voluntary work for the charity Sightsavers International, a group committed to combating blindness in developing countries. In August 2014, Gwynne was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian opposing Scottish independence in the run-up to September's referendum on that issue. Career Gwynne became an actress in her mid-twenties. In her first prominent television role she played feminist lecturer Dr Robyn Penrose in the BBC television mini-series dramatisation of David Lodge's Nice Work in 1989. Her first high-profile comedy role was as Alex Pates in Drop the Dead Donkey in 1990. She then appeared in the 1991 Children's ITV science-fiction series Time Riders and later became a regular in Peak Practice; first appearing at the start of series 7 (episode 1) in 1999 as Dr Joanna Graham. The character of Dr Graham was written out of the show at the end of series 9 (episode 13) when she was fatally shot whilst intervening in a conflict between a man and his daughter. After Peak Practice, Gwynne went on to star in Merseybeat in 2001. In 2002, she starred in the television drama for the BBC The Secret playing the character of Emma Faraday. Her theatre work has included regional and London-based appearances, from the Octagon, Bolton in Hedda Gabler, to Richard Cheshire's Way of the World appearing in West End productions of Ziegfeld as Billie Burke (1988), City of Angels and Billy Elliot the Musical at the Victoria Palace Theatre, for which