An attractive supporting player with cascades of curly brown hair and expressive eyes, Julia Sawalha is best known to American audiences as Saffron, the straight-laced daughter of free spirit Edina Monsoon on the cult hit comedy "Absolutely Fabulous" (1993-95). The daughter of Jordanian character actor Nadim Sawalha, she spent five years attending the Italia Conti Academy before embarking on an acting career. After three seasons appearing in plays based on C.S. Lewis' "The Chronicles of Narnia", Sawalha landed her first major role, the lead in the British children's series "Press Gang" (ITV, 1989-93). After landing the role of Saffron, Sawalha co-starred in another British sitcom "Second Thoughts", as a rebellious teenager. Her older sister Nadia appeared in several episodes as well.

American audiences may also recall the petite actress in two acclaimed costume dramas, the "Masterpiece Theatre" miniseries "Martin Chuzzlewit" (PBS, 1995), in which she was the wife of an abusive husband, and "Pride and Prejudice" (A&E, 1996), in which she was the flighty, marriage-minded Lydia Bennett. Sawalha has not had much of a big screen career to date. Her debut was in a small part in the little-seen "Buddy's Song" (1991). She was shown to much better comic advantage in Kenneth Branagh's "A Midwinter's Tale/In the Bleak Midwinter" (1995), as a nearsighted, scatterbrained actress playing Ophelia in a rag-tag theatrical production. Sawalha reached her widest audience to date as the voice of the heroine Ginger in the animated "Chicken Run" (2000).