Gugulethu Sophia Mbatha

Does she like playing little sisters?
Gugu Mbatha-Raw first came to the attention of American genre audiences as Martha Jones' (fellow Femme Fantastique Freema Agyeman) younger sibling Tish on Doctor Who.
And, when JJ Abrams cast his series UnderCovers, Gugu auditioned for the role of Samantha Bloom's kid sister Lizzy!
Apparently, Abrams thought "Kid sister? The hell with that! She's the LEAD!"
Wise man, that JJ!
She was the best thing about the show!  ;-)
Besides doing a lot of genre tv and movies (see below), this graduate of the acclaimed Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts performed to rave reviews both on the London stage and Broadway including Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, and Ophelia in Hamlet (which went from the West End to Broadway)!
A Fantastic Femme to watch!

Genre credits include...
Cloverfield Paradox
A Wrinkle in Time (Dr Kate Murry)
Beauty and the Beast  [2017] (Plumette)
Black Mirror "San Junipero" (Kelly Booth)
Jupiter Ascending (Famulus)
Touch (Clea Hopkins)
Odd Thomas (Viola)

UnderCovers (Samantha Bloom)

BoneKickers (Viv Davis)

Bad Girls (Fidelity Saunders)

Trial Retribution (Jenny Miller)

Disarming Britain: FallOut (Shanice Roberts)

Doctor Who (Letitia "Tish" Jones)

Spooks aka MI-5 (Jenny)

Check out...
Gugu Mbatha-Raw (FanSite)
Adoring Gugu (FanSite)
Profile at RADA (via Wayback Machine)
Profile on the Undercovers page at NBC

Fantastic Femmes on "The Carrie Dairies"

The prequel series to Sex and the City premieres tonight on the CW featuring two Fantastic Femmes!

Freema Ageyman as Carrie's mentor, Larissa Loughton

 Ellen Wong as Carrie's best friend, Jill "Mouse" Thompson

Ayesha Dharker

An amazingly-versatile actress, equally at home doing comedy like Outsourced, drama like City of Joy, or genre / action.
There's not much out there about her personal life.
Apparently, Ayesha lets her growing body of work speak for itself. No complaints there! I've enjoyed her in everything I've seen her in, and look forward to her next appearance, genre or not.
She's currently starring in the period-piece (1950s) BBC-TV series The Indian Doctor, playing the title character's wife, Kamini Sharma.

Genre appearances include...

War Within aka Red Alert: the War Within (Radhakka)

Doctor Who"Planet of the Ood"

Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones(Queen Jamillia)
Waking the Dead"Subterraneans"
Arabian Nights[2000] (Coral Lips)
Terrorist aka Theeveravaathi (Malli)
Manika, une vie plus tard(Manika Kallatil)

Check out...
She doesn't have an official page, nor are there any fan pages I could find!
Interview with the Times of India

Elisabeth Claira Heath Sladen (Miller) 1946-2011

We learned yesterday of the passing of actress Elisabeth Sladen, best known as Sarah Jane Smith on Doctor Who and The Sarah Jane Adventures, due to cancer.

with the Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee)

She played opposite Jon Pertwee, then Tom Baker as The Doctor.
Elizabeth was so popular that, when she left the show, it drew media attention that only the changing of the Doctor's portrayers had previously-garnered.

with the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker)

The BBC created a pilot called K-9 & Company starring Sladen as Sarah Jane along with the robot dog created during Baker's run of Dr Who.
It wasn't picked up, but Elizabeth returned to the Sarah Jane role in "The Five Doctors", playing opposite Jon Pertwee once more as all The Doctor's incarnations (along with various aides) were brought to Galifrey, his home planet.

Elizabeth played Sarah Jane once more on the resurrected Doctor Who (the first human character from the earlier series to do so) in "School Reunion".

with the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant)

with the Eleventh (current) Doctor (Matt Smith)

With both ratings and audience response to Sarah Jane's return going thru the roof, the BBC decided to add a second Dr Who spinoff, but with a juvenile slant, to counterpoint TorchWood's more "adult" orientation.
The result was The Sarah Jane Adventures, with Elizabeth leading a motley group of teens, including Sarah Jane's adopted son, against alien threats to Earth.
The series, now in it's fifth year, is among the highest-rated kids' shows in England.

Hopefully, SyFy will run the remaining seasons of Sarah Jane Adventures...

Sophie Okonedo

Academy Award and Golden Globe-nominated actress Sophie Okonedo moves easily from playing the title role in Mrs. Mandela to making multiple appearances (including a gun-toting Queen Elizabeth the 10th) on Doctor Who! (And Sophie was just named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, one of the highest awards a civilian can receive in England!)

Genre appearances include...

Criminal Justice(Jackie Woolf)

Æon Flux(Sithandra)

Alex Rider: Operation StormBreaker(Mrs. Tulip Jones)

Doctor Who

"The Beast Below" (Queen Elizabeth the 10th aka Liz 10)

 "Scream of the Shalka"(Alison Cheney)

Note: the animated "Scream" is not considered "canon" in the Dr Who series.

Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls(Wachati Princess)

Spooks aka MI5 (Amanda Roke)

Check out...

Welcome to Sophie Okonedo (FanSite)

Angel Coulby

A trend in films and tv series has been what some call "Smallvillization", revamping a concept by doing the characters as teenagers / young adults, before they grow into the better-known adult versions.
Since in most cases, we already know what will eventually happen to them, it offers the chance to see how they became the iconic characters we know! (Occasionally taking startlingly-different turns from what we thought we knew!)
Sometimes it works (Smallville, Star Trek[2009])
Sometimes it's so-so (Robin Hood[2006-08], Young Hercules)
Sometimes it hurls chunks (Flash Gordon[2007], Lone Ranger [2003])
One of the good things to come out of this has been "color-blind" re-casting of supporting characters, such as Asian-Canadian Kristen Kreuk as the usually red-headed Lana Lang.
In the case of Merlin, a BBC series retelling the legend of Camelot, which had a summer run on NBC and is currenly running new eps on SyFy, it introduced Americans to a talented, beautiful actress in the role of Guinevere, the future queen of Camelot--Angel Coulby!
Interestingly, all the listings I've found have listed her ancestry as "mixed", so I don't know if I should call her "African-Anglo" "Caribbean-Anglo" or whatever!
(For the record, I'm "German-Irish-American".)

Beyond a quick appearance on an episode of Doctor Who, we Colonials haven't seen anything of the lovely lady. Hopefully, this series will give her the American attention she deserves...

Genre appearances include...
Merlin[2008-Present] (Guinevere aka Gwen)
Doctor Who"Girl in the Fireplace" (Katherine)
M.I.T. Murder Investigation Team "Episode 2.1'
Check out...
Angel Coulby Online (FanSite)
May 2010 Interview with Angel on SpinOff Online
Interview with Angel Coulby on BBC website

Other actresses to play Guinevere include...
There's almost four dozen of them including Keira Knightley, Lena Headley, Vanessa Redgrave, Julie Andrews, and Ava Gardner listed on the Internet Movie DataBase!

Freema Agyeman

Going from Doctor Who to Dickens and back again was a snap for award-winning actress Freema Agyeman.
She started on the British soap opera CrossRoads, movied on to guest-star roles on prime-time series, and landed the role of the Tenth Doctor Who's companion (after guest starring as another character) all within a four-year span!
Talk about meteoric!
In addition, she appeared in the acclaimed BBC production of Charles Dickens' Little Doritt (as Tattycoram) and a remake of the 1970s post-apocalyptic tv series Survivors!
She's also done Doctor Who and Torchwood audiobooks and animation voice work (on Doctor Who: The Infinite Quest).
Currently, she's starring as Crown Prosecutor / Solictor Advocate Alesha Phillips (equivalent to an American assistant district attorney) on Law & Order: UK. but it's a fair bet she'll show up somewhere in the Whoverse before too long...
Trivia: Freema is a spokesperson for Divine Chocolate, an ethical corporation that helps Ghanaian cocoa farmers make a fair living.

Genre appearances include...
Law & Order: UK
(Crown Prosecutor and Solicitor Advocate Alesha Phillips)
Survivors [2008] (Jenny Walsh)
Bizarre ER (Narrator)
Doctor Who / Torchwood / Infinite Quest
(Dr Martha Jones-Smith / Adeola Oshodi [Martha's cousin])
The Bill (Shakira Washington)
Silent Witness (Mary Odgen)

Check out...
Freema's FaceBook page
Freema's Bebo page
Freema Agyeman.com (FanSite)
Freema Agyeman.org (FanSite)