Catherine Jane Ford (born 5 December 1969), known professionally as Catherine Tate, is an English actress, comedian and writer. She has won numerous awards for her work on the BBC sketch comedy series The Catherine Tate Show (2004–2007), as well as being nominated for an International Emmy Award and seven BAFTAs. Tate played Donna Noble in the 2006 Christmas special of Doctor Who, and later reprised her role, becoming the Tenth Doctor's regular companion for the fourth series in 2008. Following the success of The Catherine Tate Show, Tate starred as Joanie Taylor ("Nan") in the BBC One comedy series Catherine Tate's Nan (2009–2015) and in the film The Nan Movie (2022). In 2011, she began a recurring role as Nellie Bertram in the U.S. version of The Office, and was a regular until the series ended. She played the role of Miss Sarah Postern in the BBC One sitcom Big School (2013–2014) and voiced Magica De Spell in the animated series DuckTales (2017–2021). In 2022, Tate starred as six characters in the Netflix comedy series, Hard Cell, which she also co-wrote and co-directed. Tate has also appeared in films, including Love and Other Disasters (2006), Mrs Ratcliffe's Revolution (2007), Gulliver's Travels (2010), Monte Carlo (2011), and SuperBob (2015). Early life Tate was born in Bloomsbury, London on 5 December 1969 and was raised in the Brunswick Centre. Her mother, Josephine, was a florist. Tate has said that the character of Margaret in The Catherine Tate Show, who shrieks at the slightest of disturbances, is based largely on her mother. Tate never knew her father as he left very early on in her life and, consequently, she was brought up in a female-dominated environment, being cared for by her mother, grandmother, and godparents. As a child, Tate suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and was obsessed with word association. For example, she was not able to leave a jumper on the floor because it might have brought misfortune to her mother, whose name began with the letter "J" like "jumper". Tate attended St Joseph's Roman Catholic Primary School in Holborn, and Notre Dame High School, a convent secondary school for girls in Southwark. By the time she was a teenager, she knew she wanted a professional acting career; following the abolition of the sixth form at her secondary school, she was sent to a boys' Roman Catholic school, Salesian College in