Laura Fraser
Laura Fraser is an actor, born 1975.
Laura Fraser's first significant part was Door in the BBC's Neverwhere in 1996, an adaptation that has aged into a cult object, and it set the pattern for a career that keeps landing next to fascinating material rather than in the middle of it.
The late 1990s were mostly period work: The Man in the Iron Mask, Cousin Bette, a 1999 A Christmas Carol, Lavinia in Titus, and Kate in A Knight's Tale, which remains the one everybody has seen. Then television found the thing she is best at, which is playing people whose composure is a working decision rather than a temperament.
Lydia Rodarte-Quayle in Breaking Bad, and later in Better Call Saul, is the definitive version: all clipped politeness and visible arithmetic, a woman doing frightening work in the vocal register of someone worried about a quarterly target. It would be easy to play that as camp. Fraser plays her as genuinely out of her depth and refusing to admit it, which is both funnier and worse.
Scotland has kept her busy since. She led Lip Service as Cat MacKenzie from 2010 to 2012, played Professor Sarah Gordon in the forensics drama Traces from 2019, and has taken on DI Bea Metcalf in Patience. Add The Missing, One of Us and Crime and she has quietly become one of the reliable spines of British crime television.
Movies (17)
- A Knight's Tale (2001)
- The Man in the Iron Mask (1998)
- Titus (1999)
- No Half Measures: Creating the Final Season of Breaking Bad (2013)
- Iron Jawed Angels (2004)
- Kevin & Perry Go Large (2000)
- A Christmas Carol (1999)
- The Flying Scotsman (2006)
- I Am Not a Serial Killer (2016)
- Land of the Blind (2006)
- Cousin Bette (1998)
- The Match (1999)
- Den of Lions (2003)
- Nina's Heavenly Delights (2006)
- The Boys Are Back (2009)
- Dark Encounter (2019)
- Station Jim (2001)
TV (11)
Where to start with Laura Fraser
Most people arrive from Breaking Bad, and that is a fair reason: Lydia is the best sustained thing she has done, and the performance rewards a second pass because so much of it sits in the hands and the pauses.
Where to go next depends on appetite. Neverwhere is the one with the cult attached, though it wears its budget on its sleeve. A Knight's Tale is the crowd-pleaser, and she is the reason its romance functions at all. Titus is the hardest watch here and the best evidence of her range.
On the British side, Lip Service was the lead role that should have led to more, Traces is the solid procedural, The Missing is the prestige option, and Patience is where she has landed now.