Catherine Tyson (born 12 June 1965) is an English actress. She won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the film Mona Lisa (1986), which also earned her Best Supporting Actress nominations at the Golden Globes and BAFTA Awards. She has starred in The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988), Priest (1994), and Band of Gold (1995–1997). She won the British Academy Television Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2022 for her performance in the film Help. Early life Tyson was born in Kingston-upon-Thames on 12 June 1965, the daughter of an English social worker mother and a Trinidadian barrister father. She grew up in Liverpool, having moved there with her parents when she was two years old. She was a pupil at St Winefrides school in Dingle. She attended Liverpool's Everyman Youth Theatre in her teens, and dropped out of college at 17 to pursue an acting career there. Career Tyson joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1984, taking the lead role in their performance of Golden Girls. Also in 1984, Tyson made an early TV appearance playing Joanna in Scully. Tyson's film debut was in Mona Lisa (1986) as Simone, an elegant prostitute, a performance which brought her critical acclaim. Her other films include Business as Usual (1987), The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988), The Lost Language of Cranes (1991), Priest (1994) and The Old Man Who Read Love Stories (2001). Probably her best-known television appearance was also as a prostitute, Carol Johnson, in the ITV series Band of Gold. In 2007, Tyson joined the cast of two long-running television series. She played headmistress Miss Gayle in the BBC One school drama Grange Hill, and featured in the ITV soap opera Emmerdale as single mother Andrea Hayworth. Tyson played Herodia in BBC Three's Liverpool Nativity, a modern adaptation of the traditional Christmas story. Recorded as a live event in Liverpool City Centre on 16 December 2007, it was broadcast several times over the Christmas period and repeated the following year. In September 2009, Tyson enrolled at the adult learning centre City Lit on an access to higher education course in creative studies. She completed a degree in English and Drama at Brunel University in 2013. In 2021, she guest starred in an episode of TV drama McDonald & Dodds. In 2021, Tyson appeared in Channel 4 film Help playing Poll, an