Sarah Hadland is the English actress best known as Stevie in the BBC sitcom Miranda. She finished runner-up on Strictly Come Dancing in 2024 and spent summer 2026 in a West End lead. If you’ve seen her face somewhere and can’t place it, you’re in good company. Her career runs from West End chorus lines to a Bond film to some of the best-loved British comedies of the last twenty years.

Sarah Hadland: Quick Facts

Detail	Info
Full name	Sarah Hadland
Date of birth	15 May 1971
Age	55
Birthplace	St Albans, Hertfordshire, England
Acting since	1994
Training	Laine Theatre Arts
Best known for	Stevie Sutton in Miranda
Children	One daughter
Instagram	@hadderstime

A small correction you’ll need if you’ve read other profiles: her IMDb bio says she was born in London. Wikipedia and most other sources list St Albans, and that’s the one to trust.

What Is Sarah Hadland Doing Now? (2026)

This has been one of her busiest years yet. There’s a West End lead, a returning TV role and a film still to come.

Starring in The Truth at the Apollo Theatre

This summer she joined Stephen Mangan, Ardal O’Hanlon and Janie Dee in The Truth, Florian Zeller’s comedy about affairs and lies, translated by Christopher Hampton. She played Alice, the character with the most to hide.

Reviews were strong. The Guardian gave the production five stars and praised how cleverly she handled everything Alice keeps buried. The Financial Times and The Telegraph each gave four stars, and The Telegraph picked out her deadpan, unbothered take on the part. Audiences turned up too. The Apollo added an extra matinee in July because tickets were selling.

For my money, this is the role people will point back to. Stevie made her famous, but Alice showed a quieter, sharper side of her that TV hasn’t really used yet.

Daddy Issues on BBC One

On television she plays Rita in BBC One’s Daddy Issues, now two series in, opposite Aimee Lou Wood and David Morrissey. The show did well with critics and viewers, and for a lot of younger fans it’s their first introduction to her.

Death in Paradise and Other Recent TV

She guest-starred as Deborah Shelman in Death in Paradise and turned up in Misguided, a short Channel 4 comedy. She also took part in The Great British Pottery Show and the Celebrity Apprentice special for Children in Need.

Upcoming Projects

Her agency says she has filmed a role in a major feature film. No title has been announced. We’ll add it here once it is.

Where Have You Seen Sarah Hadland Before?

Here’s the likely answer, depending on what you watch.

Miranda (Stevie Sutton)

Her biggest role by some distance. From 2009 to 2015 she played Stevie Sutton in Miranda, the BAFTA-nominated BBC One sitcom. Stevie ran the joke shop with Miranda and spent most episodes trying, and failing, to keep her in line. The friendship behind the role gets its own section below.

Horrible Histories

She was part of the original cast of Horrible Histories on CBBC, and Queen Victoria was among her characters. In 2019 she came back as Irene the Iceni in Horrible Histories: The Movie – Rotten Romans.

Quantum of Solace and Her Film Roles

Bond fans can find her in Quantum of Solace (2008) as the Ocean Sky receptionist. It’s a small part, but it’s the credit most US viewers will recognise.

She has appeared in Magicians and Learners (both 2007) and Leap Year (2010). In Confetti and Magicians she worked alongside David Mitchell and Robert Webb. Later credits include Now Is Good (2012), Burton & Taylor and The Understudy.

The Job Lot, Green Wing and Other British Comedies

Between 2013 and 2015 she played Trish in ITV’s The Job Lot, a sitcom set in a West Midlands jobcentre. The part got her an RTS nomination for Best Comedy Performance.

Her comedy CV is long. She has been in Green Wing, Broken News, Hang Ups, Waterloo Road, W1A and That Mitchell and Webb Look, and she played scriptwriter Gillian McGovern in Moving Wallpaper.

Voice Work You Might Not Know About

Some of her work you’ve heard rather than seen. She was the white kitten in a Catsan advert and the American surfer girl in an ad for VO5 shampoo. Gamers may know her from extra voice work in Dragon Quest VIII on PlayStation 2, or as Ceila Reidley in the English dub of Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva. In the UK version of The Queen’s Corgi, she voices Mitzi the vet.

From Dancing at Three to the West End: Sarah Hadland’s Early Life

The dance background is the key to her later Strictly run, so it’s worth knowing.

Childhood and Training

She began dance classes at three. At Wilmslow High School in Cheshire she joined the Tempo youth group and got into amateur dramatics. After school she trained at Laine Theatre Arts in Surrey, a college known for sending graduates straight into musical theatre.

West End Musicals to TV Comedy

At 19 she was dancing in Cats and Grease in the West End. Six years later she switched to touring theatre, including a production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and started picking up voiceover jobs on the side.

TV came slowly. First there were small parts in Bad Girls and The Bill, then bigger comedy roles in Green Wing and Broken News. Miranda came after that.

She has never really left the stage. Her theatre credits include Noises Off at the Garrick, The Norman Conquests at Chichester Festival Theatre, Dance Nation at the Almeida and Admissions at Trafalgar Studios.

Sarah Hadland on Strictly Come Dancing 2024

Nobody had her down as a finalist when the line-up was announced. She made it anyway.

Partnered with Reigning Champion Vito Coppola

She joined the 22nd series in August 2024. Some sites say series 23, which is wrong. Her partner was Vito Coppola, who had just won the previous series with Ellie Leach. That meant she started the competition with a reigning champion beside her, and a fair amount of pressure.

Every Dance and Score, Week by Week

These are the official scores for her full run. She and Vito never landed in the bottom two, and their 35.3 average was the third-best of the series.

Week	Dance	Song	Score (out of 40)
1	Quickstep	“9 to 5” – Dolly Parton	30
2	Paso doble	“Freed from Desire” – Gala	32
3 (Movie Week)	Viennese waltz	“Hedwig’s Theme” – Harry Potter	33
4	Foxtrot	“Birds of a Feather” – Billie Eilish	27
5	Samba	“Do It, Do It Again” – Raffaella Carrà	32
6 (Halloween)	Argentine tango	“Ready or Not” – Fugees	38
7 (Icons)	Cha-cha-cha	“Like a Prayer” – Madonna	37
8	American Smooth	“Proud” – Heather Small	33
9 (Blackpool)	Couple’s choice	“Padam Padam” & “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” – Kylie Minogue	39
10	Rumba	“Chains” – Tina Arena	36
11 (Musicals)	Charleston	“Popular” – Wicked	38
12 (Semi-final)	Tango	“Big Love” – Fleetwood Mac	36
12 (Semi-final)	Jive	“I’m So Excited” – The Pointer Sisters	36
13 (Final)	American Smooth	“Proud” – Heather Small	39
13 (Final)	Showdance	“Cabaret”	39
13 (Final)	Cha-cha-cha	“Like a Prayer” – Madonna	40

The Most Emotional Moments

In Week 4 she danced a foxtrot to “Birds of a Feather” for her daughter. She explained that it’s a song the two of them sing together.

The dance people still talk about came in Week 8. She did an American Smooth to Heather Small’s “Proud”, a song Miranda fans know well from the show. The judges gave it 33. Social media disagreed loudly, and that was the week a lot of viewers started calling her a possible winner. I’d side with the fans on that one. It was a low mark for a routine that clearly carried more than the steps, and it’s telling that she picked it again for the final and got 39.

Viewers had noticed her long before that. After her Week 2 paso doble, one fan joked online that she needed to stop being so good because it was only week two.

Why Was She So Good?

Mostly because she’d done this before. Thirty-plus years after those first dance classes, and with years of West End musicals behind her, she arrived with the posture, timing and stage presence most celebrities spend half the series trying to learn.

It wasn’t flawless. At Blackpool, Craig Revel Horwood said her Kylie routine was a little too perfect and felt it lacked emotion in places. Her 27 for the foxtrot shows the early weeks weren’t easy either. That climb from 27 to a perfect 40 in the final is a big part of why people got behind her.

How Far Did Sarah Hadland Get on Strictly?

All the way to the final. Chris McCausland and Dianne Buswell won the series. Sarah and Vito shared the runner-up spot with JB Gill and Lauren Oakley, and Tasha Ghouri and Aljaž Škorjanec. She then went out on the Strictly Come Dancing Live Tour.

Sarah Hadland and Miranda Hart: The Friendship Behind Stevie

Stevie worked because she was everything Miranda wasn’t. She was small, loud, competitive and forever trying to take charge. A lot of the show’s best comedy came from the two of them rubbing each other up the wrong way.

Off screen, the pair are still best friends. That’s why the “Proud” dance landed so hard with Miranda fans. It felt like a quiet thank-you to the show that made her name.

Sarah Hadland’s Personal Life: Partner and Daughter

She keeps her private life private. It isn’t publicly known whether she has a partner.

She does have one daughter, and the “Birds of a Feather” dance is about as much as she’s shared about their life together. We’re leaving it there.

Sarah Hadland FAQs