Biography

Rachel grew up in East Sussex the only daughter of a civil servant and a speech therapist, Mike and Mary Bell. Her English teacher encouraged her to audition for the National Youth Theatre. She spent several seasons there working with its founder Michael Croft playing Ophelia in Hamlet and Desdemona in Othello. After failing to get into drama school on her first attempt she gained entry to the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School leaving with the Peter Ackerman comedy award. She began her professional career at The Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich in the early nineties going on to work for the National Theatre at the Haymarket in London in Tom Stoppard's "Arcadia", and with Richard Harris in Pirandellos Henry V at Wyndhams. She played the mother of a profoundly deaf daughter played by Maisie Sly in The Silent Child the Oscar winning short. Rachel decided to learn sign language having been unable to communicate properly with Maisie on the set.

- IMDb mini biography by: David Scott.