Alex Kingston's Real Name: Alex Kingston

Quick answer: The actress works as Alex Kingston. Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine says she was born on 11 March 1963 in Epsom, Surrey, and the i newspaper says she grew up in Epsom. Neither source spells out a longer legal name.

Real name and early life

Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine, in its guide to her 2012 episode of the genealogy series, says she was "born on 11 March 1963 in Epsom, Surrey." The i, in a February 2023 interview, describes her as 59, which fits that birth date. A Library of Congress record lists her as Alex Kingston without a longer form.

The i says she grew up in Epsom, that her father was a butcher, and that her mother's brother is the German actor Walter Renneisen. It says she was not academic at school, describing herself as "numerically dyslexic," but that backstage visits to her uncle sparked her love of theatre. The magazine says her episode traced her father's family, including a great-grandfather, William Keevil, a Royal Engineers sapper and photographer killed at Passchendaele, and a 19th-century ancestor who ran a lodging house in Westminster.

Career highlights

The i says her career began in the 1980s, when as a teenager she appeared in the BBC's Grange Hill. It says she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in the early 1990s, shortly after leaving RADA, along with her then-boyfriend and later first husband, Ralph Fiennes.

The i says her trajectory changed with the 1996 television adaptation of Moll Flanders, in which she played the lead opposite Daniel Craig and Diana Rigg, and that a promotional trip to the United States led to an offer from ER. Both sources say she is known for playing Elizabeth Corday on ER; the i says she played the trauma surgeon for 12 years and spent about 20 years based in America.

Both sources also identify her as River Song in Doctor Who. The i says she appeared in 15 episodes opposite David Tennant, Matt Smith, and Peter Capaldi, and voiced the character in the audio series The Diary of River Song. It also lists her role as Sarah Bishop in Sky's A Discovery of Witches.

In 2023, the i says, she returned to the Royal Shakespeare Company to play Prospero as a woman in The Tempest at Stratford-upon-Avon. It says she had settled in Oxfordshire.

Name notes for searchers

People looking up Alex Kingston are looking for the ER and Doctor Who actress. Elizabeth Corday, River Song, and Moll Flanders are characters, not her names.