Telford was born in Norwich, England. She started training as a dancer at a very young age and continued until she was in her 20s. She attended the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts. Her first break was on the show The Bill, a police drama, in 1993.
Career
After guesting in The Bill, Telford appeared as a guest on several British TV shows before landing her first mini-series The Last Train. One of her first recognisable works was arguably in the first season of Channel 4's Teachers where she played Maggie, a cop and Simon Casey's girlfriend, played by Andrew Lincoln. In the TV movie Men Only, she played Alice, a nurse that was gang-raped by a group of men she had known and flirted with, played by, among others, Stephen Moyer and Martin Freeman. She then played the social worker Christina Leith in Real Men, a 2-part TV drama that tackled the subject of paedophilia. Telford appeared as Eva Braun in the 2003 Emmy-nominated ' opposite Robert Carlyle. The TV movie was broadcast on CBS with some controversy as it reportedly "likened the nation's acceptance of the Bush administration's preemptive strike on Iraq to the climate of fear that allowed Hitler to prosper". Her screen time was short since the film focused more on the events leading up to the Final Solution. In Agatha Christie's Poirot's Death on the Nile, Telford played Rosalie Otterbourne, one of the cruise passengers alongside Emily Blunt, James Fox, and David Suchet. She played Alison Jackman, a young trainee at the fictional PR firm of Prentiss McCabe headed by Stephen Fry in the BBC's Absolute Power, and as trauma doctor Jane Cameron in The Golden Hour, a 4-part miniseries from ITV. Telford played Emily Trefusis in Agatha Christie's Marple's The Sittaford Mystery, produced jointly by Granada and WGBH-Boston. The show was broadcast in the US in 2006 as part of PBS's Mystery! anthology series and marked her second collaboration with James Fox. She was also in three different movies in the same year: This Charming Man, The Painted Veil, and The Truth. She played Abigail Thomas, Assistant Private Secretary to the Sovereign, in the 8-episode ITV series The Palace. The show was originally conceived as an answer to The West Wing but had to undergo several script changes and "ended up a different genre altogether". She worked for the first time with Juliet Stevenson in the 3-part ITV series A Place of Execution; the show was broadcast in the US in 2009 as part of PBS's Mystery! anthology. Telford appeared in other procedural shows including ', the second season of Criminal Justice where she played the defence barrister for Maxine Peake’s character Julie, Collision which was broadcast in the US under PBS’s Masterpiece Contemporary, as a freelance tabloid reporter in two episodes of the comedy series The Thick of It, and Foyle's War, shown in the US under PBS's Mystery! series. She was in Episodes 2 and 3 of the first season of the BBC's Sherlock as Sarah, a physician colleague and love interest of Dr. John Watson, played by her Men Only co-star Martin Freeman. Telford's appearance as Freya Carlisle in Lewis reunited her with Juliet Stevenson and James Fox, and as Eva Storr in the BBC's Room at the Top with her Criminal Justice co-star Maxine Peak. She played the newly-created character Claire Sutton, a policy adviser, in the 2013 remake of Yes, Prime Minister. For her role as Paula, a beleaguered housewife who helps Mal, a blind veteran, find his dog in the film Greyhawk, Telford won a Special Commendation Award at the 2014 Edinburgh International Film Festival where the film premiered. She appeared in the Series 17 opening episodes of Silent Witness as DCI Jane de Freitas. Her role as Bella Cross, the daughter of one of the main suspects in the first season of Unforgotten reunited her with her former co-star in The Last Train, Nicola Walker. She played the tragic Clara Haber in the first season of National Geographic's Genius – Einstein. She appeared in other British TV series like Death in Paradise as Michelle Devaux, a professional poker player, and Grantchester as Professor Jean Simms, Head of the Computing Department at the University of Cambridge, ca. 1950s. She played Sarah Bradford, the missing wife of DI David Bradford in the TV series London Kills, produced by Acorn TV and acquired by the BBC for 2020 release in the UK.
Personal
Telford has a son and a daughter. She lives in Oxfordshire.
