Joanne Froggatt was born in 1979 in the village of Littlebeck, North Yorkshire, UK. She started going to a drama school in Maidenhead at the age of 13 and was also a member of the "Rounders" youth theatre group at Alan Ayckbourne's Stephen Joseph Theatre, In The Round. Eventually, she was cast in the role of a teenage prostitute in "The Bill".Apparently uncertain about an acting career, Joanne started working in a regular job in Scarborough and was thinking of giving up acting when she was invited to audition for the long-running TV series Coronation Street (1960). She was accepted for the role of Zoe Tattersall and this kept her occupied from May 1997 to December 1998. Joanne has also appeared in Heartbeat (1992), Dinnerladies (1998), Bad Girls (1999) and Nature Boy (2000), plus the television movies The Last Detective (2003) , Lorna Doone (2000) and Downton Abbey (2010).In 2010 Joanne won a BIFA award as 'Best Newcomer' for her role in In Our Name, the tale of a soldier returning from the Iraq war and struggling to reintegrate into her former civilian life.In 2013, Joanne stars opposite James McAvoy in Irvine Welsh's feature adaptation of his own novel, the black comedy Filth with Jim Broadbent, Imogen Poots and Jamie Bell.