Miriam Margolyes is a British-Australian actress, writer and broadcaster, best known worldwide as Professor Pomona Sprout in the Harry Potter films and as a BAFTA winner for The Age of Innocence. Born in Oxford on 18 May 1941, she is 85 years old as of October 2026, and she is still working — most recently as the star of the Oscar-nominated short film A Friend of Dorothy (2025). Few performers have moved so easily between Shakespeare, Dickens, Hollywood drama, family animation, radio and prime-time television chat shows, and fewer still have done it while remaining entirely, unmistakably themselves.
At a Glance
- Full name: Miriam Margolyes OBE
- Born: 18 May 1941, Oxford, England
- Age: 85, as of October 2026
- Nationality: British and Australian — she took Australian citizenship in 2013, as reported by Radio Times, while retaining her British citizenship
- Occupation: Actress, voice artist, writer and broadcaster
- Education: Oxford High School; Newnham College, University of Cambridge, where she read English
- Best known for: Professor Pomona Sprout in the Harry Potter films; Mrs Mingott in The Age of Innocence (1993); the Nurse in Romeo + Juliet (1996); Sister — later Mother — Mildred in BBC One’s Call the Midwife; Fly the dog in Babe (1995)
- Key honour: BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for The Age of Innocence; appointed OBE in the 2002 New Year Honours for services to drama, according to the British Film Institute (BFI)
- Books: This Much Is True (2021), Oh Miriam! (2023) and The Little Book of Miriam (2025)
- Partner: Heather Sutherland, her partner since the late 1960s
Who Is Miriam Margolyes?
Miriam Margolyes is one of Britain’s most distinctive character actresses. The BFI’s Screenonline biography notes that she built her reputation first in radio and voice work, then on stage and screen, winning major awards along the way, rather than following the conventional drama-school route.
That unconventional path became part of the appeal. Different generations know a different Miriam: Blackadder and BBC radio, the BAFTA-winning Scorsese performance, Hogwarts’ kindly Herbology teacher, or the formidably frank chat-show guest. All of them are the same performer.
That longevity puts her in the company of the great British character actresses of her generation — among them Dame Patricia Routledge, whose own career moved between stage, radio and beloved television roles.
Where Was Miriam Margolyes Born and Educated?
Miriam Margolyes was born in Oxford, England, on 18 May 1941, the only child in an Ashkenazi Jewish family, according to biographical reporting summarised by the BFI and other reference sources. Her father, Joseph Margolyes, was a Scottish-born doctor and general practitioner originally from Glasgow. Her mother, Ruth, worked in property.
She was educated at Oxford High School and then at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she read English. Cambridge was also where acting began in earnest: she performed with the Cambridge Footlights in the early 1960s, alongside a generation that included future comedy figures, and she represented Newnham College on the first series of University Challenge.
She did not attend drama school. Instead, as the BFI records, she auditioned for the BBC’s drama department and began her professional career in radio — a beginning that shaped the extraordinary voice career that followed.
How Did Her Acting Career Begin?
Margolyes started in theatre and, from the mid-1960s, in BBC radio drama — a beginning documented in the BFI’s Screenonline biography of Miriam Margolyes. Voice work quickly became a calling card. She voiced commercials, documentaries, audiobooks and animated characters, and she has long been regarded in the industry as one of Britain’s most accomplished voice artists.
On television, early success included the BBC adaptation The Girls of Slender Means in 1975, and through the 1980s she became a familiar comic presence. In Blackadder (1983–1988) she played several memorable roles across the series, including the Spanish Infanta and Lady Whiteadder. She also won serious critical attention on screen: her performance as Flora Finching in Little Dorrit (1988) earned her the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1989, according to her official awards listing.
The stage ran in parallel throughout. A lifelong admirer of Charles Dickens, she created and toured the one-woman show Dickens’ Women between 1989 and 2012, playing more than twenty Dickens characters in a single evening. The show earned her an Olivier Award nomination. In 2006 she originated the role of Madame Morrible in the West End production of Wicked, and she played the same role on Broadway in 2008.
What Is Miriam Margolyes Best Known For in Film?
The BAFTA win for The Age of Innocence
Her defining film honour came with Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence (1993), adapted from Edith Wharton’s novel. As Mrs Mingott, the sharp, scene-stealing matriarch of a wealthy New York family, Margolyes won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role — the award is listed by her own official site and by the BFI; the film was released in 1993 and the BAFTA was presented at the 1994 ceremony. It remains the performance critics most often cite when explaining her range: comic timing placed inside a serious period drama, without ever tipping into caricature.
Professor Sprout in Harry Potter
For a global audience, she will always be Professor Pomona Sprout, the Herbology teacher and head of Hufflepuff house at Hogwarts. She played Sprout in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) and returned for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (2011). It was a relatively small amount of screen time with an outsized afterlife — the warm, muddy-fingered professor is one of the most affectionately remembered supporting characters in the series, and the role introduced Margolyes to millions of viewers who had never seen her stage or radio work.
Romeo + Juliet, Babe and a career of voice roles
In Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (1996) she played the Nurse, bringing warmth and comedy to a fast, stylised version of Shakespeare. Voice roles from the same decade reached just as many people: she was Fly, the motherly border collie, in Babe (1995), the Matchmaker in Disney’s Mulan (1998), and both Aunt Sponge and the Glowworm in James and the Giant Peach (1996). Later voice credits include Happy Feet (2006), Flushed Away (2006) and Early Man (2018).
Her wider film list shows the same breadth: Yentl (1983), Little Shop of Horrors (1986), Magnolia (1999) and Ladies in Lavender (2004).
What Role Did She Play in Call the Midwife?
Margolyes joined BBC One’s Call the Midwife as Sister Mildred in the 2018 Christmas special, arriving at Nonnatus House with four young orphans, as the BBC announced at the time. The character was then elected Mother Superior of the order, and from series eight she was known as Mother Mildred — which is why both names appear in listings for the same role.
She played Mother Mildred as a recurring character from 2018 to 2021, returning for later Christmas episodes. It was a fitting late-career television role: formidable, funny and compassionate in equal measure, in one of the BBC’s most-watched dramas.
Her other notable television work in this period of her career includes Prudence Stanley in the Australian drama Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012–2015), and, in November 2023, the voice of the Meep in The Star Beast, the first of the BBC’s Doctor Who 60th anniversary specials, as PA Media reported at the time of the announcement.
From Travelogues to Chat-Show Favourite
Alongside acting, Margolyes became a documentary presenter. She appeared in The Real Marigold Hotel and fronted BBC series including Miriam’s Big American Adventure (2018). With Alan Cumming she made Miriam and Alan: Lost in Scotland for Channel 4, which won a BAFTA Scotland award in 2022, according to her official awards listing. In 2024 she returned with Miriam Margolyes: A New Australian Adventure.
Her appearances on programmes such as The Graham Norton Show also made her famous for a frank, funny interview style. Behind that persona sits the record: a working actress with a career spanning more than sixty years.
What Books Has Miriam Margolyes Written?
After decades of being asked, Margolyes published her first memoir, This Much Is True, with John Murray on 16 September 2021, at the age of 80. It became a bestseller and stayed in the top ten for over a year, according to her publisher.
She followed it with a second book, Oh Miriam!: Stories from an Extraordinary Life, published on 14 September 2023, and then The Little Book of Miriam, an A-to-Z collection of stories and reflections published on 11 September 2025, according to publisher Hachette UK. Together the three books cover her Oxford childhood, Cambridge, radio, theatre, film, love, ageing and fame — in her own voice, and on her own terms.
In April 2022 she was also the subject of Miriam Margolyes: Up for Grabs, an episode of the BBC’s Imagine… documentary series presented by Alan Yentob.
When Did Miriam Margolyes Become an Australian Citizen?
Margolyes became an Australian citizen on Australia Day, 26 January 2013, while retaining her British citizenship. As Radio Times’ Big Interview with Miriam Margolyes has reported, her certificate was presented by the then prime minister, Julia Gillard, at the national citizenship ceremony in Canberra.
The decision reflected a long connection: she had lived and worked in Australia for long periods over many years, performed on Australian stages, and her partner is Australian.
Who Is Miriam Margolyes’ Partner?
Margolyes has been with her partner, Heather Sutherland, since the late 1960s — a relationship of more than five decades, as reported by British Vogue in its July 2023 Pride issue profile of the actress. Sutherland is an Australian academic, a retired professor of Indonesian studies who was formerly based in Amsterdam.
In that 2023 Vogue interview, Margolyes confirmed that the couple had entered into a civil partnership, describing it as mainly for legal protection; reference sources date the partnership to 2013. For most of their relationship they lived in different countries — Sutherland in Amsterdam, Margolyes in London — and Margolyes has credited that independence, in her own interviews, with helping the relationship last. In November 2023, speaking on The Graham Norton Show as reported at the time, she said the two now wanted to live together.
Margolyes has been open about being a lesbian throughout her public life, discussing it on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs as long ago as 2008 and in both of her memoirs.
What Has Miriam Margolyes Said About Her Health?
Health is covered here only as Margolyes herself has described it in her own interviews.
Speaking on the Table Manners podcast in October 2023, she explained that she had undergone a transcatheter aortic valve procedure — commonly shortened to TAVR or TAVI — in which her aortic valve was replaced, a procedure she noted avoided open-heart surgery. She discussed it publicly, in her own words, on the podcast, and the update was widely reported by PA and other outlets at the time.
She has also spoken openly, in magazine interviews in 2024 and in an interview with The Times in 2025 reported by other major outlets, about living with spinal stenosis, about reduced mobility, and about using mobility aids. In those same interviews she was clear that she wanted to keep working and keep taking roles. Those reflections on ageing and mortality are her personal views, expressed by her in interviews — they are not a medical prognosis, and this profile does not present them as one.
What Is Miriam Margolyes Doing in 2025 and 2026?
As of October 2026, Margolyes is still adding firsts to her career. In 2025 she starred as Dorothy in A Friend of Dorothy, a short film written and directed by Lee Knight and co-starring Stephen Fry. The film was nominated for Best Live Action Short Film at the 98th Academy Awards, held in 2026, according to Attitude magazine’s reporting on the nomination. Attitude also reported in February 2026 that a feature-length version was in development, with Margolyes on board to reprise the role — a development project, not yet a released film.
Also in 2025, she performed her solo Dickens show Margolyes and Dickens: More Best Bits at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and published The Little Book of Miriam. In June 2026, Broadway World reported that she would receive a Raindance Icon Award at the Raindance Film Festival. And she is due to be heard on 29 October 2026 as Cleek MacSawney in Big Finish Productions’ full-cast audio adaptation of Young Bond: SilverFin, announced by Big Finish — a return to the audio drama world where her career began more than sixty years ago.
What Is Miriam Margolyes’ Net Worth?
No verified net worth figure is published here. Numbers attached to her name online come from unverified celebrity-wealth aggregator sites with no audited sources, and no reputable outlet has published a confirmed figure. Treat any specific total on those sites as an estimate of unknown reliability, not a fact.
Frequently Asked Questions
How old is Miriam Margolyes?
Miriam Margolyes is 85 years old as of October 2026. She was born on 18 May 1941 in Oxford, England, and turned 85 in May 2026.
What did Miriam Margolyes play in Harry Potter?
She played Professor Pomona Sprout, the Herbology teacher and head of Hufflepuff house, in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (2011).
Did Miriam Margolyes win a BAFTA?
Yes. She won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for playing Mrs Mingott in Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence (1993), presented at the 1994 BAFTA ceremony.
Who is Miriam Margolyes’ partner?
Her partner is Heather Sutherland, an Australian retired professor of Indonesian studies. They have been together since the late 1960s and entered into a civil partnership, as Margolyes confirmed in a 2023 British Vogue interview; reference sources date the partnership to 2013.
Is Miriam Margolyes Australian?
She holds dual nationality. Born in Britain, she became an Australian citizen on Australia Day, 26 January 2013, while retaining her British citizenship, as reported by Radio Times.
What was Miriam Margolyes’ role in Call the Midwife?
She joined the BBC drama as Sister Mildred in the 2018 Christmas special. After the character became Mother Superior of the order, she was known as Mother Mildred, a recurring role she played from 2018 to 2021.
What books has Miriam Margolyes written?
Her books are This Much Is True (2021), Oh Miriam! (2023) and The Little Book of Miriam (2025), all published by John Murray / Hachette UK.
