Miranda Raison named Norfolk Icon at the Norfolk Arts Awards

From school productions in north Norfolk to acclaimed performances on stage and screen, Miranda Raison’s career has taken her around the world. As she receives this year’s Norfolk Icon Award in partnership with Norfolk magazine at the Norfolk Arts Awards, she tells us why the county’s creativity, quietness and can-do spirit continue to inspire her

When Miranda Raison told her nine-year-old daughter that she was to receive this year’s Norfolk Icon Award at the Norfolk Arts Awards, the news prompted a charmingly direct question.

‘She said: “What’s an icon?”’ Miranda laughs. ‘But I’m over the moon. I had just finished doing Grace Pervades when I found out about it.’

The award, in partnership with Norfolk magazine, recognises artists with Norfolk connections who have achieved national or international prominence and helped to promote the county to a wider audience. Previous recipients include Olivia Colman and Stephen Fry.

Miranda Raison. (Image: Courtesy of Miranda Raison)

For Miranda, whose acclaimed career has encompassed television, film, theatre and voice work, the award feels particularly meaningful because it comes from the place where her story began.

Born at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn, she grew up in Burnham Thorpe. Although she later moved to London to attend drama school, Norfolk has remained a constant presence in her life.

‘My brother and my mother have never left,’ she says. ‘Like a lot of people,

I was away during my twenties and thirties, but now I have children, we are back all the time. Norfolk is a huge part of my life.’

Miranda’s major career breakthrough came playing MI5 officer Jo Portman in the BBC spy drama Spooks. Her other screen appearances include Warrior, Sister Boniface Mysteries, Silk, Vexed and 24: Live Another Day. On stage, she originated the title role in Howard Brenton’s Anne Boleyn at Shakespeare’s Globe and played Hermione in Kenneth Branagh’s production of

The Winter’s Tale, appearing alongside Branagh and Judi Dench.

Performance was already part of family life when she was growing up. Her mother, Caroline, was a newsreader for Anglia Television, although a quirk of regional broadcasting meant the family received Yorkshire Television at home.

Miranda Raison. (Image: Courtesy of Miranda Raison)

‘At school in Burnham Market, people would say: “Your mum’s famous”, but I never saw her on television,’ Miranda recalls. ‘I do remember going into the studio and having my make-up put on. Mum was reading the news around the same time as Judy Finnigan was at Anglia.’

Miranda attended Gresham’s School between the ages of nine and 13 – Olivia Colman and Sienna Guillory were a few years above her. One of her earliest stage appearances was a school production of A Tomb with a View. The recording survives on a treasured family VHS, although Miranda admits that her friend, Henry Layte, who later founded Norwich’s much-loved Book Hive, received the best reviews at home.

‘My father still says Henry in A Tomb with a View is his favourite production,’ she laughs.

Miranda’s route into acting was made possible by an opportunity she will always be grateful for. After securing a place at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, she received one of a small number of grants then awarded by Norfolk County Council.

‘The major thing I owe Norfolk is my drama-school training, because I was given a grant to go,’ she says. ‘Drama and dance courses weren’t degrees then, so you didn’t automatically qualify for funding. Norfolk County Council gave a very small number of grants each year towards tuition and lodging fees.

‘I had to audition in Norwich. It was all very serious and I bought a blazer for it. The arts can be very difficult to get into – especially if you know you have to take on a large debt before you have even begun.’

Creativity, she believes, runs deeply through Norfolk. Her brother is a musician and plays in bands, while her sister-in-law is an art teacher at a north Norfolk school. Across the county, Miranda sees a community of painters, ceramicists, musicians, performers and makers finding the physical and imaginative space to create.

‘It isn’t just the landscape,’ she says. ‘There are the spaces for people to be artists, whether that is turning a barn into a studio or simply finding somewhere to put something on. Most actors I know have, at some point, appeared at Norwich Theatre Royal.’

She points to Holt’s arts awards, run by Lady Anwen Hurt, and the remarkable collections at the Gunton Arms and Suffield Arms, where works by internationally recognised artists, such as Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst, hang in the surroundings of a country pub.

‘You can go to a pub because there is amazing art,’ she says. ‘It comes from a place of aesthetic joy as well. It is almost a case of: “If you build it, they will come.”’

While neighbouring Suffolk has its own flourishing arts scene, Miranda senses something distinctively unconventional about Norfolk.

‘There is something inherently free and bohemian about Norfolk,’ she says. ‘There isn’t that industry edge to it and there is no upper age limit. There is a culture of creativity and of giving something a go.

‘People think that if somewhere is quiet, there can’t be much going on. But in Norfolk, there is something about the space and quiet that encourages people to do things. Norfolk is filled with busy people and I always feel energised here.

Miranda Raison. (Image: Courtesy of Miranda Raison)

‘As a teenager, I felt: “I want to get out of here, to where life is.” Now I come back to Norfolk and feel that this is where life is.’

That spirit of participation underpins her advice to young people hoping to pursue a career in the arts. She cites Suffolk’s INK Festival, which brings together established names and emerging talent through new short plays, as an example of what can happen when people create opportunities locally.

‘This is probably advice I would have turned my nose up at when I was young,’ she says, laughing. ‘When I started, there was no social media, and I still don’t have any, for better or worse. People can feel that if they have an online presence, they have a presence, but there is no substitute for getting people together and putting something on, whether that is in a pub or a barn,’ she says.

‘You might have 10 people in the cast and six people in the audience, but it is better to put on a play than to sit in your room and not do it. Acting is such a collaborative thing. Even if you can get only two people together, you are learning how to work with somebody and how to listen.

‘You could simply read a play. It might sound a bit pretentious, but have an evening, cook something and read a play together. You don’t have to make it to London straight away. You can make connections here.’

Norfolk and Suffolk, she points out, are home not only to performers but to agents, casting directors and others working across the creative industries. She also advises aspiring actors to see as much live work as possible.

One memorable evening was at Sheringham Little Theatre, where Miranda and her mother saw Posting Letters to the Moon. The production uses the wartime correspondence between Brief Encounter actress Celia Johnson and her husband, the writer Peter Fleming (brother of James Bond creator Ian Fleming), and was performed by their daughter, Lucy Fleming, with her husband, Simon Williams.

Miranda’s own return to the stage last year came after a nine-year break. Her most recent theatre production had been The Winter’s Tale. Since then, she had welcomed two children, now nine and four, with a pandemic arriving between them.

‘It was a long time before it was the right time,’ she says.

Then she was sent David Hare’s Grace Pervades. The play explores the intertwined lives and careers of Victorian theatrical stars Henry Irving and Ellen Terry. Miranda played Terry opposite Ralph Fiennes as Irving, examining the celebrated creative partnership that transformed British theatre, as well as the personal sacrifices behind their success.

‘I was totally blown away by the script and very, very moved by it,’ she says.

Actress Miranda Raison..Picture: ANTONY KELLY. (Image: Antony Kelly)

The production, directed by Jeremy Herrin, premiered at Theatre Royal Bath in 2025 before transferring to London’s Theatre Royal Haymarket for a limited season earlier this year, with Miranda and Ralph reprising their critically acclaimed roles.

Despite the scale and grandeur of both venues, Miranda found an unexpected intimacy in them.

‘Bath and the Haymarket are both big, imposing theatres, but they feel quite intimate,’ she says. ‘I went to the Haymarket to see Tamsin Greig in The Deep Blue Sea a few months before we started and thought: “This theatre is so big.”

‘But when I stood on stage for the first day of the technical rehearsals, it felt just like Bath, only with blue velvet instead of red velvet. In the best possible way, it was like going back to drama school. Every day we would be laughing and chatting with the wigs and wardrobe teams. And it was very nice to have a lovely big dressing room right in the middle of the city.’

With Grace Pervades completed, Miranda is preparing for another screen project, with filming due to begin in the autumn. For now, the details must remain under wraps.

What she can celebrate openly is being named a Norfolk Icon, an accolade that connects a distinguished career with the county that helped to make it possible. A place of opportunity, imagination and creativity.