Barbara Marten
Barbara Marten is a British actress. She is most known for playing Eve Montgomery in Casualty. She has appeared in various soaps, including EastEnders and Brookside, as well as many other drama serials, such as Harry, The Bill and Band of Gold.
Early life
Marten was born in Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire, and grew up in County Durham. She went to the all-girls William Newton School in Norton, then Stockton and Billingham Technical College. She went to drama school at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art as a teenager for three years, and later said that it put her off becoming an actress. Marten trained as a teacher in Birmingham and taught for two years before being drawn back to the stage.After becoming involved with a theatre group in Coventry, Marten joined a newly formed theatre group in Doncaster. They toured Yorkshire, performing plays about various subjects, including the St Leger, and another about battered wives.
Career
In 1996, Marten appeared at the National Theatre in Helen Edmundson's adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. She has also appeared in various other plays such as Hamlet, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Winter’s Tale, Get Up & Tie Your Fingers, The Awkward Squad, Heldenplatz, The Enemies Within, Some Kind of Hero, The Glass Menagerie, Everything Is Possible: The York Suffragettes and a touring production of An Inspector Calls.From 1997 to 1999, she played the part of nurse Eve Montgomery in Casualty. Since then, she has appeared in many TV dramas, receiving much acclaim for her work in dramas such as Bob & Rose and Fat Friends. Marten played the lead role of Ellen in the film Between Two Women, and then in A Passionate Woman as Moira. She appeared in the 2012 series Public Enemies.
Marten then played Hannah Greg in the period television drama series The Mill which was about life at Quarry Bank Mill during the Industrial Revolution.
Marten appeared as Elizabeth I in the fantasy television series A Discovery of Witches, and has played Sylvia Chambers on the drama thriller television series The Devil's Hour since 2022. In 2024, Marten began portraying Sister Avila in the HBO science fiction series Dune: Prophecy.