Vera - Hidden Depths - 10:00 pm Sunday, May 31 on ITV3

Brenda Blethyn (Actor) .. DCI Vera Stanhope

Born: February 20, 1946 in Kent

Best Known For: Secrets & Lies.

Early-life: Born Brenda Anne Bottle on February 20, 1946, in Ramsgate, Kent. She's the youngest of nine children of a parlour maid and a chauffeur. Money was tight when she was growing up. After excelling at maths at school, she worked as a secretary and bookkeeper in a bank. But she was always obsessed with films and acting and, at the age of 27, after divorcing her first husband, she gave up her day job and used her savings to fund a drama course at Guildford. She didn't tell her parents, and thought she would go back to her old career if things didn't work out.

Career: Blethyn gained early experience with two small theatre groups before joining the National Theatre in 1975. Her TV debut was in a 1979 episode of Tales of the Unexpected, and a year later she had a lead role in Mike Leigh's small-screen project Gloria. In 1990 she made her first film, The Witches, following that up with A River Runs Through It. Despite roles in Outside Edge and The Buddha of Suburbia, she didn't become a household name until her Oscar-nominated role in Leigh's Secrets & Lies. Since then she's starred in Girls' Night, Saving Grace, Pride & Prejudice, Atonement, London River, and gained another Oscar nomination for Little Voice. She returned to the small screen in 2011 playing the title role in ITV's detective series Vera.

Quote: 'I don't have ambition. My expectations are low.'

Trivia: Blethyn was awarded an OBE for services to drama in the 2003 New Year Honours List.

David Leon (Actor) .. DS Joe Ashworth

Best Known For: Vera.

Early-life: David Jeremy Leon was born in 1980 in Newcastle upon Tyne to Ann and Anthony. As a teenager, Leon was on the books of Blackburn Rovers, but they released him when he was 19. He turned to acting and successfully auditioned for the National Youth Theatre. He dropped out of drama school to shoot the film Alexander (2004) with Oliver Stone in Morocco. In 2006, he had a main role in the film These Foolish Things (2006).

Career: Leon went on to star in the miniseries The Wild West, RocknRolla (2008) and Walking with the Enemy (2013). Between 2011 and 2014, he starred alongside Brenda Blethyn in ITV drama Vera, playing DS Joe Ashworth.

Quote: 'You can't get away with enjoying acting in a working-class environment.'

Trivia: Leon's short film Orthodox was accepted into several international film festivals. He completed a feature length version of Orthodox in 2015.

Wunmi Mosaku (Actor) .. DC Holly Lawson

Born: July 31, 1986 in Zaria, Nigeria

Best Known For: Playing Gloria Taylor in Damilola, Our Loved Boy.

Early-life: Oluwunmi Olapeju Mosaku was born on July 31, 1986 in Zaria, Nigeria. She moved with her family to Manchester, England, where she was educated at Trinity Church of England High School and Xaverian Sixth Form College and sang in the Manchester Girls Choir for 11 years. Wunmi graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 2007.

Career: Mosaku's professional acting career began with various roles on the stage. Some of her early TV roles include appearances in Doctors and The Bill. She was cast as Joy in the BBC Two mini-series Moses Jones and then went on to appear in such TV series as Silent Witness, The Body Farm and Vera. Mosaku also appeared in the films Philomena (2013), Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016). She played Gloria Taylor in the TV film Damilola, Our Loved Boy (2016). Her other recent TV credits include Guerilla and Fearless.

Quote: 'I don't pick roles because of a strong woman - most of the time, with the good characters, there's a certain vulnerability there. I pick roles because they're good stories that are being told.'

Trivia: She won the BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Damilola, Our Loved Boy.

Paul Ritter (Actor) .. Billy Cartwright

Neil Armstrong (Actor) .. Gary Wright

Born: August 05, 1930 in Wapakoneta, Ohio

Best Known For: Being the first man to walk on the moon.

Early-life: Neil Alden Armstrong was born on August 5, 1930, in Wapakoneta, Ohio. During his youth he was constantly moved around because his father worked for the government, before the family settled in Wapakoneta. He attended Blume High School and Purdue University before being called into the Navy. He became a fully qualified Naval Aviator and served in the Korean War, before returning to university.

Career: After graduation, Armstrong became an experimental research test pilot. He began working at the Lewis Field in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1955. Two years later he was selected for the US Air Force's ‘Man in Space Soonest' programme, and this appears to be the first point in which he was linked to space travel. Shortly after this he joined NASA, and was drafted onto the crew of Gemini 8 in 1965. Four years later Armstrong was selected to command Apollo 11, and his place in the annals of history was assured. Since that monumental mission, he became a professor at the University of Cincinnati and has taken part in NASA's investigations into disasters such as the Challenger Shuttle explosion.

Quote: 'That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.'

Trivia: In 1978, president Jimmy Carter awarded him the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.

Juliet Aubrey (Actor) .. Felicity Calvert

Craig Conway (Actor) .. Davy Sharp

Philip Correia (Actor) .. Ben Craven

Sam Fender (Actor) .. Luke Armstrong

Murray Head (Actor) .. Peter Calvert

Paul Higgins (Actor) .. Clive Stringer

Best Known For: Playing Hilton in Line of Duty.

Early-life: Born in 1963 in Lanarkshire, Scotland. Paul was raised Roman Catholic and, as a teenager, trained to be a priest. He gave up his training at age 17 when he began dating. Next, he took up acting, attended drama classes in Motherwell and secured a place at London's Central School of Speech and Drama.

Career: Higgins has made a number of appearances on the stage and on TV. Among the plays he has had roles in are Paul and Black Watch. On TV, he has appeared in Silent Witness, Hope Springs and Utopia. He played Jamie McDonald in The Thick of It and its spin-off film, In the Loop (2009). Higgins plays Hilton in the police drama Line of Duty. He has also written his own plays, including Nobody Will Ever Forgive Us, which was performed at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, and The Choir, which was produced by the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow.

Quote: 'I didn't know much about acting until I worked with Mike [Alfreds] in my early 30s. His way of thinking about performing has stayed with me ever since.'

Trivia: He married actress Amelia Bullmore, who he met in 1992 when he performed A View From the Bridge with her in Manchester.

Jim Kitson (Actor) .. Charlie

Gina McKee (Actor) .. Julie Armstrong

Born: April 14, 1964 in Sunderland

Best Known For: Our Friends in the North.

Early-life: Born in Sunderland in 1964, she was raised in Easington, County Durham, by non-theatrical parents. Notoriously reticent at talking about her family, but she does admit to being a highly creative and imaginative child who loved to draw, write stories and act out plays. She became hooked on acting and, while not encouraged by her parents, they didn't stand in her way when she won a role on TV show Quest of Eagles before joining the National Youth Theatre.

Career: At 17, McKee auditioned but was turned down by drama school. At first, she thought she wouldn't make it in showbusiness, but continued auditioning anyway. She appeared on TV in such programmes as An Actor's Life for Me, Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, Inspector Morse, and The Lenny Henry Show. McKee also made a handful of movies, most notably Mike Leigh's Naked, before hitting the big time with miniseries Our Friends in the North in 1996, for which she won a Bafta. Since then, she's appeared in such acclaimed projects as Notting Hill, Croupier, The Forsyte Saga, The Lost Prince and The Borgias.

Quote: 'Some people can talk about their private lives to the media, and good luck to them. But I just don't feel comfortable. And I wouldn't be any good at it - showing people around my kitchen or whatever. I'd be pathetic in fact.'

Trivia: In 2002, McKee received an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from the University of Sunderland.

Samantha Neale (Actor) .. Lily Marsh

Gabrielle Ross (Actor) .. Laura Armstrong

Louis Shergold (Actor) .. James Calvert

Rosie Stancliffe (Actor) .. Lucy

Patrick Toomey (Actor) .. Samuel Parr

Peter Michael McGowan (Actor) .. Solicitor

Andrew Thompson (Actor) .. Officer 1

Paul Rutman (Writer)

Adrian Shergold (Director)

Elwen Rowlands (Producer)

Tania Reddin (Editor)

Kate Bartlett (Executive producer)

Kate Lewis (Executive producer)

Vera: Hidden Depths

10:00 pm - 11:50 pm, Sunday, May 31 on ITV3 (10)

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Hidden Depths
Season 1, Episode 1

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