Biography
Pauline Melville is an English actress and writer of mixed European and Amerindian ancestry, born in Guyana. She began her career in theatre in the 1960s and appeared in films from 1967, including Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), The Long Good Friday (1980) as Dora, Britannia Hospital (1982), Mona Lisa (1986) as George's Wife, and How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1989).
On television she had roles in series such as The Young Ones (1982–1984) and Blackadder's Christmas Carol (1988). From the early 1990s she turned to writing short stories and novels. Her works include the collection Shape-Shifter (1990) and the novel The Ventriloquist's Tale (1997). She has received awards including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Guyana Prize for Literature.
