Vicky McClure: Age, Line of Duty, Trigger Point, MBE and Life in Nottingham (2026)

Vicky McClure is an English actress from Nottingham, born on 8 May 1983, best known for two career-defining police roles: Detective Inspector Kate Fleming in the BBC’s Line of Duty (2012–2021, with a seventh series announced in November 2025) and explosives officer Lana Washington in ITV’s Trigger Point (2022– ). She first broke through as Lol Jenkins in Shane Meadows’ This Is England (2006), winning the BAFTA for Best Actress in 2011, and was appointed MBE in the 2023 Birthday Honours for services to drama and to charity. As of October 2026, she is 43, married to film director Jonny Owen, and still lives in Nottingham.

At a Glance: Vicky McClure

• Full name: Vicky Lee McClure MBE
• Born: 8 May 1983, Wollaton, Nottingham, England — 43 years old as of October 2026.
• Best known for: Lol Jenkins in This Is England (2006) and its Channel 4 sequels; Detective Inspector Kate Fleming in Line of Duty (2012–2021); Lana Washington in Trigger Point (2022– ).
• Major award: BAFTA Television Award for Best Actress, 2011, for This Is England ’86; also won the Royal Television Society Award for Best Actress the same year.
• Recent award: National Television Award for Drama Performance, September 2026, for Trigger Point.
• Honour: Appointed MBE in the 2023 Birthday Honours; invested at Windsor Castle on 12 December 2023.
• Charity work: Founder of Our Dementia Choir (2018) and presenter of the BBC One documentary Our Dementia Choir with Vicky McClure (2019).
• Family: Married film director Jonny Owen on 11 August 2023 in Nottingham.
• Current work: Trigger Point series 4 aired August–September 2026; Line of Duty series 7 announced in November 2025, with filming in Belfast from spring 2026.

Who Is Vicky McClure?

Vicky Lee McClure was born on 8 May 1983 in Wollaton, a suburb of Nottingham, and grew up in a working-class family: her father was a joiner and her mother a hairdresser. She has an elder sister, Jenny, and was educated at Fernwood School in Nottingham. She took dance lessons from the age of three, and at 11 she auditioned for the Central Junior Television Workshop in Nottingham. She failed the first audition but was recalled a week later after another child dropped out, and at the Workshop she was mentored by fellow Nottingham-born actress Samantha Morton.

At 16, McClure won a place at the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts in London, but her family could not afford the tuition fees, so she stayed at the Workshop instead. Her first screen role came even earlier: aged 15, she played Ladine Brass in Shane Meadows’ independent film A Room for Romeo Brass (1999). Work was scarce afterwards, and at 19 she gave up acting for a time and worked in retail, before resuming auditions while holding down a part-time office job in Nottingham. The role that changed everything arrived a few years later, from the same director who had given her her start.

How Did Vicky McClure Become Famous?

McClure’s breakout came as Lorraine “Lol” Jenkins in Shane Meadows’ This Is England (2006), a coming-of-age film set among young skinheads in 1983 that explored far-right politics seeping into British youth culture. Lol was the girlfriend of Woody, played by Joe Gilgun, and McClure played her across the film and all three of its Channel 4 television sequels: This Is England ’86 (2010), This Is England ’88 (2011) and This Is England ’90 (2015). Over nearly a decade, viewers watched Lol grow from a teenager into a young mother, and the sequels gave McClure some of the most demanding material of her career.

The role made her, and it set the pattern of her career: tough, grounded, working-class women, and long-running collaborations with directors she trusts. The This Is England company became a second family, and many of its cast have remained close friends ever since.

What Did Vicky McClure Win a BAFTA For?

McClure won the BAFTA Television Award for Best Actress in 2011 for her performance as Lol in This Is England ’86, beating Anna Maxwell Martin, Natalie Press and Juliet Stevenson. She also won the Royal Television Society Award for Best Actress for the same role that year, and she was nominated for the BAFTA again in 2012. Her win is a matter of record in BAFTA’s own awards archive, which lists Vicky McClure as the 2011 winner for Leading Actress for This Is England ’86.

The award is worth stating precisely, because some online profiles get it wrong: she won Best Actress — the leading-actress prize — not Best Supporting Actress. The supporting-actress BAFTA that year went to Lauren Socha for Misfits. McClure’s win was the moment she stopped being a promising newcomer and became one of the most in-demand dramatic actresses in British television.

Who Is Kate Fleming in Line of Duty?

In 2012, McClure joined the BBC’s police anti-corruption drama Line of Duty as Detective Sergeant Kate Fleming, an undercover officer in AC-12, the unit that investigates bent coppers. Alongside Martin Compston as DS Steve Arnott and Adrian Dunbar as Superintendent Ted Hastings, she became one of the show’s three leads, staying through all six series from 2012 to 2021 and rising to Detective Inspector along the way. Fleming was as often the show’s moral centre as its undercover operative, working deep undercover in organised crime gangs and carrying the series’ tension between loyalty to her colleagues and loyalty to the truth.

Line of Duty became one of the biggest dramas in British television history. The series six finale in 2021 drew more than 12.8 million viewers overnight, rising to 17 million after 28 days, and the series averaged 16 million viewers — the biggest drama across the market since 2018, according to Televisual’s reporting of the BBC’s figures. The ending — in which the elusive “H” was unmasked as the bumbling DSI Ian Buckells — divided fans, and for four years it looked as though the show was finished.

Then, in November 2025, the BBC confirmed that Line of Duty would return for a seventh series, with McClure, Compston and Dunbar all reprising their roles. The new six-part series, written by creator Jed Mercurio and produced by World Productions, was due to begin filming in Belfast in spring 2026. In the new series, AC-12 has been disbanded and rebranded as the Inspectorate of Police Standards, and the trio investigate Detective Inspector Dominic Gough, a celebrated officer accused of abusing his position of trust — with the suggestion that his case may be a distraction from a bigger threat. McClure said at the announcement: “It goes without saying I’m so excited Line of Duty is back! Can’t wait to work with Jed, Martin and Adrian again. Belfast, we’ll see you soon!” No broadcast date had been announced as of October 2026.

McClure’s Line of Duty family extends beyond the screen: she is close friends with Compston, Dunbar and Mercurio, and her co-stars attended her wedding in 2023. She has also shared the screen with fellow Line of Duty star Keeley Hawes, who played DI Lindsay Denton in series 2 and 3 of the show.

What Is Trigger Point About?

If Line of Duty made McClure a household name, Trigger Point made her the face of a second hit drama. The ITV thriller, created by Daniel Brierley and first broadcast on 23 January 2022, stars McClure as Lana Washington, a Metropolitan Police explosives officer — an “Expo” — and former military bomb disposal operative who heads a bomb squad countering terrorist threats in London. She is also an executive producer on the series. The first episode opened with the shocking death of her colleague and friend Joel Nutkins, played by Adrian Lester, in an explosion — a statement of intent that the show would not protect its characters.

A second series followed on 28 January 2024, and a third was released on ITVX on 26 October 2025, with Lana dealing with post-traumatic stress and tinnitus after the losses of the previous two series, while hunting a serial bomber. It launched to 7.4 million viewers and averaged seven million across its run, according to Memorable TV, and ITV had already renewed the show for a fourth series before the third aired.

Series 4 premiered on ITV1 and ITVX on 30 August 2026, with six episodes running through mid-September 2026, in which Lana’s team faced a wave of bombings described by ITV as “the biggest terror attack this country has seen”. Julie Graham joined as Commander Nia Quentin. As of October 2026, all four series stream on ITVX, and no fifth series had been announced.

The role brought McClure her first National Television Award. At the ceremony on 8 September 2026 at the O2 in London, she won Drama Performance for Trigger Point, in a category with an all-female shortlist for the first time — Sheridan Smith, Ella Bruccoleri, Judy Parfitt and Ruth Jones were the other nominees. She told fans the award meant the world to her because it is voted for by the audience. The full list of the night’s winners is published by Radio Times.

What Else Has Vicky McClure Starred In?

McClure’s career beyond her two signature police roles is wide-ranging. In 2013 she played Karen White, a journalist, in the first series of ITV’s Broadchurch. In 2017 she starred as Paula Reece in the BBC One three-part psychological thriller The Replacement, playing a woman returning from maternity leave to find her replacement at work slowly taking over her life. In 2019 she starred in I Am Nicola, an episode of Channel 4’s I Am… anthology, and she also holds a writing credit on the episode’s story.

In 2022 she played Stella, a taxi driver grieving the death of her 14-year-old daughter, in ITV’s four-part drama Without Sin, which earned her another BAFTA nomination; she was also an executive producer. In 2024 she played Emma Averill, a successful lawyer whose life unravels as she stops sleeping before her 40th birthday, in Insomnia, based on Sarah Pinborough’s novel, for Paramount+ and Channel 5. Her earlier film work includes Filth and Wisdom (2008), Hummingbird (2013) opposite Jason Statham, and Svengali (2013).

She has also presented for Sky HISTORY alongside her husband, and the couple run Day Fever, a daytime disco event — but it is her charity work that has defined her public life away from acting.

What Is Our Dementia Choir?

In 2018, McClure founded Our Dementia Choir, for people living with dementia and their carers, inspired by her own grandmother’s experience of the condition. It became a BBC One documentary, Our Dementia Choir with Vicky McClure, in 2019, and the choir has performed and campaigned ever since. She also supports the Alzheimer’s Society and the Teenage Cancer Trust — in 2013 she opened the Hogarth Teenage Cancer Trust unit at Nottingham City Hospital.

Her charity work was recognised alongside her acting when she was appointed MBE in the 2023 Birthday Honours, for services to drama and to charity; she received the award from King Charles III at Windsor Castle on 12 December 2023. Nottingham has recognised her too: honorary doctorates from Nottingham Trent University (2015) and the University of Nottingham (August 2022, for her work with Our Dementia Choir), and in 2015 Nottingham Express Transit named tram 224 after her — renamed in February 2026 to Vicky McClure’s Our Dementia Choir.

Who Is Vicky McClure Married To?

McClure is married to Welsh film director Jonny Owen, best known for directing the football film Svengali (2013) and for his work as a producer. The couple announced their engagement on 28 December 2017 and married on 11 August 2023 at Nottingham Council House, with a reception at the Metronome in the city. They kept it secret until the day, announcing it live on BBC Radio Wales on the show presented by Owen’s daughter, Katie Owen. Guests included Line of Duty co-stars Martin Compston and Adrian Dunbar, writer Jed Mercurio, director Shane Meadows and This Is England star Thomas Turgoose. The couple live in Nottingham, and McClure is stepmother to Owen’s daughter Katie.

What Is Vicky McClure Doing Now?

As of October 2026, McClure has had one of the busiest years of her career: Trigger Point series 4 aired in August and September, she won the National Television Award for Drama Performance in September, and Line of Duty series 7 — announced in November 2025 — was due to film in Belfast from spring 2026, with no broadcast date announced yet. She continues to run Our Dementia Choir from Nottingham, the city she has never left: the working-class girl from Wollaton who auditioned for the Television Workshop at 11, could not afford drama school at 16, and went on to win a BAFTA, an MBE and a public-voted National Television Award.

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