Doncaster actress Sheridan Smith has been nominated for a BAFTA television award.

The 44-year-old Epworth born star is up for the leading actress prize for last year’s TV drama I Fought The Law.

The four part drama, available on ITV1 and ITVX, is a true crime series based on Ann Ming's non-fiction book For the Love of Julie detailing a long campaign to overturn the 800-year-old British double jeopardy law following the murder of her daughter.

Ann and her husband Charlie worked to overturn the law which prevented people being tried twice for the same offence.

Sheridan Smith has been nominated for a BAFTA television award for I Fought The Law.

placeholder image — Sheridan Smith has been nominated for a BAFTA television award for I Fought The Law.

In 2006, a man was jailed for life for the murder in 1989 of Ann’s daughter Julie, despite previous mistrials.

Others in contention for the award are

Aimee Lou Wood - Film Club (BBC Three)

Erin Doherty - A Thousand Blows (Disney+)

Jodie Whittaker - Toxic Town (Netflix)

Narges Rashidi - Prisoner 951 (BBC One)

Siân Brooke - Blue Lights (BBC One)

Born on 25 June, 1981 in Epworth, in 2020, she returned to the area to shoot an advert for Google and was filmed in the town she grew up in promoting a number of local businesses.

She has repeatedly described “Donny” as her home in media appearances.

On winning her Olivier theatre award in 2011, she exclaimed: ‘I don’t think I deserve to be here. I’m just a complete scrubber from Donny’ while on X, then Twitter,, while raving about her brother’s band performing at former town centre pub Cask Corner in 2013 she wrote: “Great to be back home in Donny, loveliest people up here!”

In the 2018 ITV documentary, Sheridan Smith: Coming Home, the actress described herself as ‘a little girl from Donny’ and revealed how she worked at a burger van in Doncaster while growing up.

The programme also saw her performing at Bentley Top Club in Bentley, following in the footsteps of her parents, who performed as popular country and western duo The Daltons in Doncaster throughout the 80s and 90s.

And in 2020, showing her support for Doncaster female world champion boxer Terri Harper, she once again described herself as ‘a Doncaster lass’ while in another tweet from 2012, explaining how she’d pretended to make cakes while actually buying them from Greggs, she wrote: “You can take the girl out of Donny...”