A novelist, dancer and movie actress, who starred in The Full Monty and Oliver Twist, was awarded her Doctorate this week by Lancaster University.
Star of screen and stage, English actor and author Emily Woof is probably best known for film and TV roles including Mandy in The Full Monty and Nancy in Oliver Twist.
She received her PhD in Dance and Novel Writing at this week's graduation ceremony at the university.
Emily, the daughter of Wordsworth Trust Director the late Dr Robert Woof, was born and brought up in Newcastle upon Tyne where she attended Heaton Comprehensive School before going up to St Catherine's College, Oxford, where she obtained a degree in English.
Emily is also very proud of her Lancastrian family connections as her grandfather was a tenant farmer and farm manager at the former Royal Albert Hospital farm in Lancaster and her Lancaster born and bred father went to Lancaster Royal Grammar School.
He kept the family’s regional connections to the North West and was the first Director of Wordsworth Trust, which looks after Dove Cottage and runs the tourist attraction now known as Wordsworth Grasmere, in Cumbria. Her mum, Pamela, continues to live in Cumbria.
Emily started writing and performing her own work while at university taking a year out to train in physical theatre with Philippe Gaulier and Monika Pagneux in Paris.
She also trained in trapeze in Bristol FoolTime and London's Circus Space and created a series of solo shows ‘Sex II’, ‘Sex III’ and ‘Revolver’ which combined music, dance, and theatre, working with her partner, British comedian, writer, actor and screenwriter Hamish McColl.
Her work, concerned with the ‘meeting point between the body and philosophy’, won Fringe Firsts, and Perrier Pick of the Fringe awards at Edinburgh.
She began her career on the big screen after she was spotted by casting director Susie Figgis playing Juliet in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ directed by Neil Bartlett.
She was offered the lead role opposite Rufus Sewell in ‘The Woodlanders’ and this began her life in film and television.
She has also appeared in several other television roles, ranging from period dramas (Middlemarch) to contemporary drama (Killer Net) and comedy (The Ronni Ancona Show). In 2016, she appeared in Coronation Street as the detective investigating the murder of Callum Logan (Sean Ward).
She continued to write her own work and published two novels ‘The Whole Wide Beauty’ and ‘The Lightning Tree’ with Faber.
She has recently returned to creating work for the stage, performing ‘Blizzard’ at the Soho Theatre, and writing plays. Her new show is playing at The Pleasance in Edinburgh from August 14 to 21.
Emily’s fascination for the combination of text and movement has long been at the forefront of her work and it was the connection between her own two creative practices that led her to ask the question ‘can we dance a novel?’
“It’s a good question IF a bit mad,” says Emily, who also writes for film, radio and theatre.
“So, I got a full scholarship to work and study at Lancaster University’s Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts.
“Eighty per cent of my PhD is a novel that I have actually danced and 20 per cent is dissertation. The dissertation used what is known as a ‘Nietzschean frame’ which enabled me to explore the intersection between dance and text and describes how dance can be used as a practice towards writing.”
Having written two novels, she successfully applied for Northwest Research Council funding to investigate just how dance could be used not only as part of a story or a novel but as a way of generating the novel.
It was in 2024 that Emily took to the stage on campus after Director of Lancaster Arts Jocelyn Cunningham saw, by chance, her show ‘Blizzard’ at the Soho Theatre, London and asked her to perform at Lancaster Arts last November.
Emily said choosing Lancaster University for her PhD was a very easy choice given her huge connection to the North West.
“It was all about place,” explains Emily. “Lancaster as a place has meaning for me because it’s where my family come from and where my brothers still live now. I found a very welcoming home for my work, and way of thinking at LICA where the approach is cutting edge and experimental.”
She is married to Hamish McColl and the couple, who have two children, live in North London.
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