Elizabeth Rider

Elizabeth Rider attended the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and was awarded the Gold Medal. She also won the Carleton Hobbs Radio Award for Best Student Actress. 

She spent six months with the BBC Radio Repertory Company and worked extensively in radio for the next few years. Her theatre work includes The Corn is Green at Greenwich Theatre, Space at the Soho Poly Theatre (for which she was awarded Best Fringe Actress) I have been Here Before at Watford Theatre Royal, Savage in Limbo at The Gate Theatre, Notting Hill, a season with the Royal Shakespeare in Stratford on Avon and The Barbican, appearances at The Donmar Warehouse, The Northcott Theatre, Exeter, Homework at BAC, Hamlet at Haymarket, Leicester, The Mercury Theatre, Colchester, and two seasons at The Stephen Joseph Theatre in the Round with Alan Ayckbourn.

Elizabeth Rider made her first television appearance as Norah in the 1979 mini series Testament of Youth.

In the late 1990s she landed the role of Sheila Thwaite in The Lakes. She has appeared in Coronation Street as Ashley's biological mother and then as Chesney's social worker a few years later. She seemed to be the only nurse at Walford General in Eastenders and last cared for Pat when she was run over. She was the King family's solicitor in Emmerdale. She plays the recurring character DCI Lynette Driver in Doctors. Most recently she was seen as Peggy in the hugely successful BBC series Call the Midwife. Elizabeth played Olive Runcie in the series Marchlands, Kerry Duggan in Accused, Mistress Ellen in The Sarah Jane Adventures, DCC Maureen Smith in Waking the Dead. She has also appeared in Heartbeat, Casualty, The Bill, Holby City, Law and Order UK, Inspector George Gently, Marple, Poirot, The Street, Silent Witness, Thing Called Love, The Royal, The Royal Today.