Joanne Froggat as Kate in the BBC series Robin Hood
Joanne Froggatt is a British actress who played the role of Ruth Tyler, Sam's mother, in Life on Mars.
Ms. Froggatt was born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire and raised in the village of Littlebeck. At the age of 13 she left home to attend the Redroofs Theatre School in Maidenhead, Berkshire. In 1996, she made her TV debut in the long-running ITV drama, The Bill, and shortly afterwards landed the role of teenage mother Zoe Tattersall in Coronation Street. She left the programme in 1998, and has since appeared in many other television dramas, including Bad Girls, Dinnerladies, A Touch of Frost, The Street, and of course, Life on Mars.
In 2003, Ms. Froggatt played the leading role in the controversial one-off drama, Danielle Cable: Eyewitness, based on the true story of a teenage girl who witnessed the murder of her boyfriend in a road rage attack, for which Ms. Froggatt received a BAFTA nomination.
She is now best known for the role of Anna Bates, née Smith, the lady's maid throughout the run of Downton Abbey. In 2016 she starred in the ITV miniseries Dark Angel.