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Actor

1972-07-05 · Brecon, Brecknockshire, Wales · Female

15 series in the catalog

Nia Roberts (born 5 July 1972) is a Welsh actress.

Early life and career

The youngest of three girls, Roberts was born and brought up in Brecon, Powys. Her first language is Welsh, and she attended Brecon's Welsh-medium primary school Ysgol-y-Bannau from 1975 to 1983. Her family were active members of the Brecon Little Theatre amateur dramatics group, and she was seven years old when she first appeared on stage. Five years later, she landed her first television role as the lead girl in "The Farm", a 30-minute Jackanory play for BBC1.

After gaining ten GCSEs and three A Levels, she joined the National Youth Theatre of Wales. She studied acting at Birmingham University, where she passed with distinction.

Career

Roberts' big break came in 1998, when she appeared in Solomon a Gaenor opposite Ioan Gruffudd. With dialogue in Welsh and Yiddish, it won Best Film at the 2000 Verona Film Festival and was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 72nd Academy Awards. It was written and directed by British filmmaker Paul Morrison.

Her subsequent Welsh-language credits include Fondue, Rhyw a Deinosors!, Newes of the Weeke, Y Palmant Aur, Glan Hafren, the long-running soap opera Pobol y Cwm, and S4C's gangster drama Y Pris. Roberts' English-language television credits include the comedy series Dr. Terrible's House of Horrible, the drama Border Café, and several single-episode appearances in prime-time British shows such as The Bill and Casualty.

Roberts has starred in two films directed by her husband, Marc Evans: Snow Cake (2006), a drama focused on the friendship between a high-functioning autistic woman and a man traumatized after surviving a fatal car accident; and Patagonia (2009), a drama set in Y Wladfa, Argentina. In 2009, Roberts starred as registrar Mary Finch in Crash!, a hospital drama commissioned by BBC Wales and produced by Tony Jordan.

In 2010, Roberts guest-starred in the two-part Doctor Who Series 5 episode "The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood". More big-screen productions followed: She appeared in Hattie Dalton's Third Star (2010) and in Vertigo Films' The Facility (2012), an atmospheric, micro-budget horror film about volunteers fighting for their lives after a drug trial goes wrong.

In 2014, Roberts appeared in the fourth episode of Y Gwyll (Hinterland), a highly acclaimed noir detective series shot in both Welsh and English.

In 2026 she was cast as the voice of Aunt Beru in the Welsh dub of Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope.

Personal life

Roberts, her husband, and their daughter, Edith, live in Cardiff.

She is a supporter of Plaid Cymru.