Angela Bruce was born in Leeds to a white mother and West Indian father, but was put up for adoption at age three. Bruce is the name of the couple who adopted her, and raised her in Craghead, a small mining village in County Durham, and she regards the North East as her home. Although black people were a rarity in the village, she regards her childhood as very happy. At age 15 she trained as a nurse, largely because it was her sister's profession, but failed her exams, and, after seeing a touring version of 'Hair' in Newcastle, decided she wanted to become an actress. In 1975 she came to notice in the BBC TV series Angels (1975) about nurses, and three years later she was even more prominent as one half of a multi-racial extra-marital affair, the first of its kind, in Coronation Street (1960). Fittingly for an actress who began her television career playing a nurse, in 2005 she took the title role in TV film Mary Seacole: The Real Angel of the Crimea (2005), Mary Seacole being a West Indian woman whose nursing skills were considered unorthodox by the far more famous Florence Nightingale but who was equally respected by the soldiers she tended in the Crimean War. In 2000 Angela was made an Ambassador of Derwentside, an honour bestowed upon people local to the North East of England considered outstanding in their chosen field.