Joanna Page was born in March 1977 in Treboeth, Swansea. She trained as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), before landing roles on with the Royal National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Early film and TV work included roles in the 1999 BBC adaptation of David Copperfield and the 2003 Christmas favourite Love Actually. But it was her role asStacey Shipmanin Gavin & Stacey that made her a key part of one of the nation’s most beloved shows. She’s since been a regular presence on our screens, with parts in Doctor Who and 2012’s Nativity 2 among her roles.
In her Letter to My Younger Self, Joanna Page looks back at her childhood love of acting, the tough times she endured while training and looking for a breakthrough and the impact of having a family.
I had a fab childhood. It was me and mum and dad, we were a very close unit, and I felt so loved and supported. I’m down to earth because of the family I’ve come from. Living down by the sea in Swansea, in the countryside, we had animals and it was very wholesome. Because I was an only child, I loved my own company, reading and making up games and stories, being in my own world, acting and dressing up or pretending to be different people. It’s easy to see how I became an actor.
At 16 I went from being head girl in an all-girls school to finding myself at college surrounded by boys. I had just left Mynyddbach Comprehensive in Swansea, so I hadn’t had contact with boys from the age of 12-16. Now I was doing A-levels in theatre studies, dance, English lit and psychology at Gower College – but within a couple of days, I dropped psychology because there were all these boys and it was too much fun. It was as if they were aliens. I would look around the canteen thinking, you can sit next to them, you can have a conversation with them, this is amazing.
I didn’t kiss anybody till I was 17. I was half excited, half terrified by boys. I still didn’t really know how to talk to them. If anybody would ask me out, I wouldn’t really talk at all – I’d just be pleased when we got to the kissing part. At West Glam Youth Theatre, I mainly stood in the corner while everybody else was getting together. I would like to tell my younger self not to worry so much about what other people think.
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I started going clubbing in a place called Cinders. I had this little green European ID thing where I’d crossed out my date of birth and would use that to get in, because I looked so young. Suddenly everyone was going to Cinders on the Mumbles seafront and my life completely and utterly changed. Before that I was only going out to do dance class or drama stuff. I was just starting to discover myself – I didn’t have any money so I would find baggy Levi’s or flares or old men’s velvet jackets in charity shops to wear.
I decided I was going to be an actress when I was still at school. I already knew I wanted to go to drama school. I wanted to be singing, dancing and acting like the performing arts students, not analysing the soul out of everything in English literature. I didn’t want to sit in a classroom and waste any more time, I wanted to get up and improvise. I wanted to be somebody else. We’d be studying King Lear and I’d be looking into the distance, acting out different emotions, trying to make myself cry or look really sad. My teacher would say, everything alright, Jo?
2003: Joanna Page with Martin Freeman in Love Actually. Image: Everett Collection Inc / Alamy
My family were incredibly supportive and stood behind whatever I wanted to do. They were like, yep, you just go straight to drama school, we’ll do everything we can to get you there. My mum was amazing. When I got in, we had to try to raise the money. Mum went to the local library and just searched through book after book trying to find charities that offered grants. We found one that gave money if you had members of your family who’d been in the Navy, and both of my granddads had been. So we managed to get funding from them and even wrote away to different actors for funding.
I was really naive and was devastated about leaving home at 18. I still remember the night before, taking everything off my bedroom walls and leaving them bare while mum locked herself in the bathroom crying. I’d been in halls of residence next to RADA for five minutes when a man locked me in his room. He turned the radio up, said he wasn’t going to let me out, kept telling me all about whatever drugs he bought. It was so scary.
RADA got worse and worse and worse. On my first day one of the girls, who turned out to be Maxine Peake, walked in late and the teacher really shouted at her. I’d never seen anybody speak to anyone like that before. I remember thinking, this is scary, I don’t feel safe. We were constantly told we were shit and couldn’t act. So you end up putting walls up and don’t want to be vulnerable or try things. It was like that the whole time. I was constantly made aware of how small and Welsh and working class I was. It was a case of bracing yourself, getting through each day, then I’d stand at the payphone sobbing to my mum and dad. The last thing anyone said to me at RADA was: “All these years, I’ve just thought that you were shit. But it’s not that. It’s that you’re Welsh.” When I left early to go to work at the National Theatre, nobody even said well done.
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As a 48-year-old woman who doesn’t give a shit what anybody thinks about her now, I wish I could talk to my younger self. I’d tell her to stop being eternally grateful for being allowed to walk through the door. You got into RADA because you deserve to be there. So take your space and don’t apologise for yourself. I’d also tell my younger self don’t try and be the same as everybody else – cling on to the thing that makes you unique.
2013: Joanna Page with husband James Thornton. Image: Joanne Davidson / Shutterstock
I turned into a lioness when I had my first child. It wasn’t until I was 35 that I got the confidence to stand up for myself. But as soon as you have a baby, you would die for that child and you stop thinking about yourself so much. Everything to do with what people think about you, none of it matters at all. If I don’t get that audition, I don’t care. I need to get home, I’ve got to do the tea for everybody.
I first saw my husband when we both did David Copperfield for the BBC. It was my first costume drama and I was about 23. But I didn’t meet him because I was too shy to go to the screening. I remember thinking, who’s this? He’s gorgeous. Because he was gentle and lovely but strong and rugged. I even said to mum when we were watching it, “Oh my god, I want that man to be the father of my children!” Little did I know that he was up in Bradford saying the same kind of thing to his mum.
A couple of years later, Maxine Peake phoned me and said, “There’s a fellow in this play who says he’s in love with you.” She was in The Cherry Orchard at the National Theatre with James, and he was shouting down the phone, “Tell her it’s Ham Peggotty,” his character in David Copperfield. So I went to the National, watched Vanessa Redgrave and everybody, then went to the green room and finally met him. We just clicked. We talked all night, then he drove me home. Before we went on an actual date, we talked for hours on the phone. He told me about the flat he’d just bought, and the shed he was going to put his drums in. Even then, I was thinking, ‘No, we’re going to knock that shed down so my dog will have more room in the garden.’ We went for a drink and just never, ever separated. We moved in together straight away.
I have had so many wonderful experiences, but I was absolutely terrified during most of them. I did my deathbed scene with Maggie Smith in David Copperfield and a dinner table scene with Imelda Staunton and Bob Hoskins, and I could barely speak because I was so in awe of everybody. So I would remind my younger self to enjoy her career more.
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I was completely and utterly obsessed with Kenneth Branagh. I would go up to the RSC with my parents to watch whatever show was on. That’s when I started reading plays and reading about acting. I remember seeing him in Hamlet [in 1992] and thinking he was the most amazing person ever. I also idolised Kate Winslet after I saw her in Heavenly Creatures. There wasn’t anyone like her – she was so real, so ethereal and beautiful, with her beautiful lips and huge eyes.
I would love to tell young Jo about all the amazing women she will work with. She’d never believe I’d become friends with Alison Steadman. I watched Abigail’s Party and Nuts in May when I was younger and thought she was just incredible. So if I’d known she would play my mother-in-law for such a long time and we would be chatting away? I’d be over the moon. And my first job out of drama school was with Fiona Shaw in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. I’d watch the way she would rehearse and it was the complete opposite to everything in RADA. She would try so many different things, make a fool of herself during rehearsals until she found her way. It was so inspiring.
2025: The cast of Gavin & Stacey at the Baftas. Image: David Fisher / Shutterstock
I was at a real low point when Gavin & Stacey happened. I had just lost out on the part of Baby in Dirty Dancing in the West End, which I threw my all into. Nothing seemed to be working. I’d got a job at a shoe shop in East Dulwich. Then my agent called about this show, about a Welsh girl who falls in love with a boy from Essex. It’s the first time I’d ever opened a script and really thought, this is me, it’s my life. It’s my people. I know this world. This was my last chance. If it didn’t work out, I was finished with acting. At the audition I met Ruth [Jones] in the toilet and was so excited because she’d just done Nighty Night with Julia Davis. In the audition room I told them all what had happened with Dirty Dancing, then read my scene and left. Apparently they all looked at each other and said, “Wow, we just met Stacey.”
I left drama school and didn’t care about being famous. I just wanted to act. So to be in Gavin & Stacey, which became a national treasure, and so well known that people shouted our catchphrases at us, was life changing. My character’s name was in the title, the story revolved around my relationship, and it was the first time I’d ever been really satisfied with anything I’ve acted in. I loved every second.
