Jacqueline Leonard

Jacqueline Leonard is an English actress. She is known for her various roles in British soap operas, including Lorraine Wicks in the BBC soap EastEnders, Caroline Powers in the BBC medical soap Doctors, Lydia Murdoch in the Scottish soap River City and Linda Hancock in the ITV soap Coronation Street. She also appeared in the ITV medical drama Peak Practice.

She grew up near Bathgate and Falkirk. Leonard trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and was the winner of the Michael Warre Award for Best Actress in 1988.

Leonard has been appearing on British television since the early 1990s. She has had roles in May to December in 1992, A Time to Dance in 1992, Inspector Morse in 1993 and Peak Practice 1993 to 1996, where she played Sarah Preston for four series. Following this, she was cast as Lorraine Wicks in the BBC soap opera EastEnders, a role she played from 1996 to 1997. She took a year off work when she left EastEnders to move from London to Lancashire and care for her sick mother.

Leonard was then cast in the BBC medical soap opera Doctors, where she played one of the original characters, Caroline Powers from 2000 to 2001. She then appeared in various other series including Nice Guy Eddie (2002), Holby City (2003), The Bill (2004), The Courtroom (2004), Goldplated (2006) Hollyoaks (2007) and Holby City (2010). In 2007, Leonard joined the cast of the BBC Scotland soap opera River City playing Lydia Murdoch. She quit the role in 2010, before reprising it in 2017. Producers killed off her character in 2019, but in 2022, she reprised the role, with her return being explained as Lydia having faked her death.

In 2011, Leonard auditioned and was shortlisted for the role of Stella Price in Coronation Street but lost out to former EastEnders actress Michelle Collins. In 2014, it was announced that she was joining Coronation Street as Linda Hancock, the ex-wife of established character Owen Armstrong and mother of Katie Armstrong and Izzy Armstrong. She appeared in 2015, but reprised the role from 2022 to 2023. Her film credits include Chaplin (1992), ID (1995), There's Only One Jimmy Grimble (1999) and The Wicker Tree (2011). On stage she has appeared in Look Back in Anger, The Taming of the Shrew,A Midsummer Night's Dream, A Clockwork Orange, Wuthering Heights and Behind the Green Curtain.