Kate Sissons

There have long been showbiz dynasties, but few have been started by a television newsreader. Kate Sissons's father, Peter (who attended the same Liverpool schools as three of The Beatles), was a familiar face on bulletins in the UK between 1976 and 2009. Kate began performing as a teenager with the National Youth Theatre, playing poet Christina Rossetti in Deidre Strath's "Goblin Market" in 1996. While training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, she took the dual roles of Hamlet and Polonia in a revisionist take on Shakespeare and was named Most Outstanding Individual Performer in 2000. She spent the next few years on the stage, working with many new and established playwrights before making her small-screen bow in the 2004 legal drama, "The Courtroom." In addition to appearing in the 1000th episode of the popular soap "Doctors," Kate has also guested in "The Bill," "Casualty," and "EastEnders." In 2006, she played Jen opposite Toby Jones in Rupert Jones' short farce, "The Sickie," which she followed with another comic turn as Destiny in Neil Carter and Gerard Monaco's "The Journey Home" and a touching portrayal of bulimia victim Jess in Stuart Birchall's "Burning." Sissons made her feature bow as Haze in Mark James and Phil O'Shea's 2007 lesbian saga, "Vampire Diary," and while she shocked some with her brazen display as a dominatrix in Robert Cavanah's "Pimp," it landed her a bit part in Mark Romanek's adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro''s "Never Let Me Go."