British film and television actress Justne Waddell was born on 4th of November 1976 in Johannesburg, South Africa. She is the daughter of Gordon Waddell, a Scottish rugby union player who captained the Scottish national team and played for the British and Irish Lions. Her father later became a Progressive Party Member of Parliament in South Africa, and a director of Anglo American PLC. Her grandfather, Herbert Waddell was also player of rugby for Scotland and the Lions.
Justine’s family relocated to Scotland when she was eleven and then moved to London four years later. Being from a family of sports men and women, she was the only member of her family to take up a career in acting. She studied Social and Political Science at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, which allowed her to take time to pursue her career.
Justine divided her work between stage and screen. She has played several roles which includes her performance as Sasha opposite Ralph Fiennes and Bill Paterson in the Almeida Theatre’s London production of Ivanov in 1997, Countess Nordston in Anna Karenina (1997), Tess in Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1998), Julia Bertram in Mansfield Park (1999), Estella in Great Expectations, Nina in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of The Seagull by Anton Chekhov (2000), in which she was nominated for an Ian Charleson award. She also played Molly Gibson in the television mini series “Wives and Daughters” for which she won a Broadcasting Press Guild Best Actress award.
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In 2002 Justine starred in The One and Only and in 2004, she won a Prism Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Natalie Wood in The Mystery of Natalie Wood, a TV movie directed by Peter Bogdanovich.
In 2006, Justine starred in “Chaos” alongside Jason Statham and Ryan Phillipe. In that same year, she co-starred with Lee Pace in Tarsem Singh’s The Fall
In 2015, she was on the jury of the Eurasia International Film Festival in Kazakhstan alongside jury chairman Abderrahmane Sissako and South Korean film director Kim Dong-ho. She also took part in the BBC New Year film programme to discuss women in film with Francine Stock, Elizabeth Karlson and Carol Morley.
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Justine is the founder and director of Kino Klassika Foundation which educates audiences about film and film materials from the countries of the former Soviet Union and she has been into acting from 1996 till date.
