Dervla Kirwan (born 24 October 1971) is an Irish television, stage, and film actress who specializes in drama roles. She gained attention for her roles in Ballykissangel, Goodnight Sweetheart, and the Doctor Who Christmas special episode The Next Doctor. Early life Kirwan was born in Churchtown, Dublin, Ireland. Her father, Peter Kirwan, was an insurance broker, and her mother, Maureen O'Driscoll, was a language teacher. She is the youngest of three daughters. She attended Loreto Beaufort in Rathfarnham, Dublin, a Catholic school for girls, until the age of 16, when she was asked to leave as her career as an actress started to progress. Kirwan completed secondary school at the now-defunct non-denominational Sandymount High School in Dublin. During an episode of Who Do You Think You Are? that aired in 2010, Kirwin learned more about her ancestors. Her great-grandmother was Margaret Collins-O'Driscoll, sister of Irish nationalist leader Michael Collins. Her maternal grandfather, Finian O'Driscoll, was Collins's nephew, and served three years with the Irish Republican Army. Her paternal grandfather, Henry Kahn, was a Polish Jewish immigrant who had married her grandmother, Teresa O'Shea, a Catholic, in Ireland. In 1902, anti-Semitic judge Frederick Falkiner sentenced Kahn to a year in prison for breaking a shop window. The trial was known as a "notorious miscarriage of justice" and likely inspired a passage in James Joyce's Ulysses. Career Television Kirwan's first credited TV roles were in the TV series Troubles in 1988 and The Lilac Bus in 1990 alongside Stephanie Beacham based on Maeve Binchy's novel. Her breakthrough television role was appearing in the 1991 BBC Scotland production of A Time To Dance, adapted by Melvyn Bragg from his own novel, playing Bernadette Kennedy. Kirwan briefly appeared in Casualty, and in the first three seasons of Goodnight Sweetheart alongside Nicholas Lyndhurst. For 23 episodes, from 1996–1998, she appeared in Ballykissangel in the role of Assumpta Fitzgerald, the landlady of the village's only pub, Fitzgerald's. She reprised this role for a Comic Relief special of The Vicar of Dibley, and for a Father Ted special. In 1999, she appeared in another BBC production, a made for TV Christmas film called The Greatest Store in the World. She played the single mother of two girls who are made homeless a few days before Christmas. Kirwan co-starred with Brian Blessed and Peter Capaldi. In 2001, she starred as Emma Rose in a BBC series Hearts and