At 17 she attended The Elmhurst Ballet School in Surrey but realised that she would probably not reach the professional level she wanted. She found acting a viable option, which she had previously viewed as a "sad second" to ballet, and gained a place at the prestigious Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. 

After graduating, she worked at the Glasgow Citizens Theatre as a theatre actress between 1992 to 1994, starring in a number of European existentialist dramas and was nominated for the 1993 Ian Charleson Award for her performance in the play "The Soldiers". 

It was at the Citizens Theatre that she met director David Elliot, who at the time was also an actor. The two soon began dating when they were both cast in production of "La Ronde", "We got on really well immediately" says Helen on their relationship, "although I think I was keener on him to start with. Our backgrounds are very similar. We have the same points of reference. Although he was born in America, you'd never know it. We started going out and we've never been apart since."

In 1993 Helen made her first and brief appearance on screen in the TV pilot "The Marshall", and also a short film called "The Euphoric Scale". 

Also in 1993 she made a guest appearance in the BBC's long running hospital drama "Casualty" in the episode “Give us this day” in which she played Emma, a brain-washed religious cult member. 

It wasn't until 1994 that Helen first caught the general public's attention. At the age of 23 director David Hayman, who had previously seen Helen at the Glasgow Citizens Theatre, cast her in BBC’s medical drama "Cardiac Arrest", which offered an alternative view of the National Health System.

The role as Dr. Claire Maitland was Helen's first major TV role and is perhaps still one of her best remembered roles in the UK, "If your character's memorable and it's well-written, you're extremely lucky - and I was," she says in an interview with GQ magazine. The show lasted for three series and ended in 1996.

In between her role in "Cardiac Arrest" she also appeared in a episode of another BBC drama series "Dangerfield" as a call girl.

With a strong performance as Dr. Claire Maitland, Helen became very much in demand for other projects.

The year 1996 was a particularly productive year for her. She played the principal part in John Madden’s Truth or Dare, in which she starred opposite John Hannah as a successful lawyer Lorna Johnston, who finds herself drawn into a murderous situation when three of her old university friends re-enter her life.

Another major role in 1996 was a pilot for a TV comedy Cold Feet, where she starred as Rachel Bradley, a woman torn between responsible Simon and care-free Adam, whom she literally bumps into in a supermarket car park. The pilot picked up a number of awards, including the Golden Rose of Montreux

In this hectic year she also found time to do a few supporting roles, starring as Queen Elisabeth I in "In Suspicious Circumstances", and as press secretary/mistress Ruth Clarke in Guy Jenkin’s "Crossing the Floor", about a Cabinet Minister (Tom Wilkinson of The Full Monty) who will do anything to succeed.

Helen made her first international appearance, in Hungarian director Ibolya Fekete’s feature film "Bolse Vita". Set in post-communist Hungary, the film tells the story of two Russian musicians who end up in Budapest on their way to a gig in Yugoslavia. Here they meet Welsh teacher Maggie (played by Helen) and her American friend Susan. The film won the Best Hungarian First Feature Prize at the 1996 Hungarian Film Week.

In 1997 she took the lead in Chris Oxley’s TV drama The Investigator. Based on a true story, Helen plays Caroline Meagher in a story about homophobia within the British armed forces. 

Helen's first involvement in a British feature film came when she was cast as Lady Macbeth in Jeremy Freeston’s "Macbeth", an adaptation of the Shakespeare play. 
The film was financed their by offering people the opportunity to invest a minimum sum in exchange for appearing in the films as extras. Although the film won a award at the 30th US International Film and Video Festival, it never received wide cinema circulation and reviews were mixed. 

In 1997, Helen began work on her next project as Cordelia Gray in the first series of ITV’s "An Unsuitable Job for a Woman", an adaptation of the of P.D. James’ novels. 
Helen found her new role as Cordelia to be quite different, “I thought she was quite an intellectual, that she was an oddly lonely character… I just thought she was a woman with quite a few contradictions”, she says about her character in a radio interview with American National Public Radio’s Liane Hansen. The show was later shown on U.S. channel PBS.

In early 1998 while in Los Angeles promoting "An Unsuitable Job for a Woman", she was contacted by the producers of hugely successful US sitcom "Friends". She had been chosen to be a guest star on the show as Ross’ British love interest Emily Waltham. 

Auditioning a year before, the role was originally offered to another British actress, Patsy Kensit, who turned it down because she felt it would be difficult to mix with a cast who had worked together for such a long time. "They'd been trying to find this English girl for a long time" says Helen. "I'd auditioned by video but it came to nothing. I was a bit relived because I didn't really want to go to America", Helen told Esquire magazine. But filming in front of a live studio audience was a new experience for Helen, and a opportunity she couldn't refuse.

Helen wanted Emily to be a 'normal English girl', but due to the producers’ instructions of conforming to American expectations of what an English accent should be, her character wasn't exactly how Helen had planned, “I found it difficult to get a grasp of who they wanted me to be. I thought, 'Sod this, I don't want to be playing someone who says, "Gawd, it's so smashing to be here, what?"' - a kind of thick aristocrat”, she revealed in an interview with The Times.

Although the Friends producers raved about her and discussed the possibility of her becoming a regular cast member, almost immediately after getting the role she found out that she was pregnant to long term partner David, which made it difficult for her to become more than a guest star.

Reports in the UK tabloids suggested that Helen found Kensit’s premonition to come true and that she had a hard time fitting in on the set, "it was all blown up, but it was my fault really. While I was filming it I'd just found out I was pregnant, felt sick and missed my partner. I suppose I felt a bit lonely and so, being honest, I said those things. Then everyone took it to mean I hated all the Friends people and that they hated me, but it wasn't that at all. In terms of my career, I get seen for more jobs because of it." says Helen upon reflecting her time on Friends.

In the meantime with the success of the pilot episode, ITV commissioned a TV series of "Cold Feet" and Helen went back to the UK to join the original cast for six new episodes. The first Cold Feet series takes off nine months after the pilot episode finished, following the lives of three twenty-something couples in Manchester.

The series proved an instant success with both critics and the viewing public, and is clear that Helen felt much more comfortable in a British comedy drama than in an American sitcom. “To me 'Cold Feet' is quite real because the characters in it are full of contradictions and that's so true to life”, she says in an interview. 

Now visibly pregnant it was uncertain if Helen would be able to do two more Cordelia Gray mysteries, which she had already signed up to do. 
The scripts needed to be rewritten to accommodate her pregnancy, and although necessary, the two new mysteries didn't go down well with everybody, according to reports P. D. James herself did not approve of the prospect of her Cordelia becoming a single mother. As a result ITV silently decided not to produce more Cordelia Gray mysteries.

On September 13th, 1998 Helen gave birth to her daughter, Nell Elizabeth Marmalade, a name she and David decided on "in a moment of madness". "It was from Educating Marmalade, a programme I really, really loved on Tv," she explains. "Marmalade was very naughty with gingery hair and freckles, a real rebel. It's for her to go, "Mu-um, you embarrassing woman" And Nell? I like the name, I had an Aunt Nell."
Within weeks of giving birth to her daughter, Helen went to Dublin to star alongside  Kevin Spacey and Linda Fiorentino in Thaddeus O'Sullivan’s feature film Ordinary Decent Criminal. 

In Ordinary Decent Criminal Spacey plays Irish gangster Michael Lynch, (based on the story of real life gangster Martin Cahill) who has a very strange reletionship with two sisters, played by Linda Fiorentino and Helen. 
Helen admitted to being starstruck by being cast in a film with Kevin Spacey: "The attractions to the role were hugely obvious. From a purely personal point of view I've never worked with anybody quite as star-like and famous as Kevin Spacey, and it just seemed an excellent opportunity to do so, and it's in a film which is funny, exciting and action-packed. To play opposite him...I mean, what a great opportunity”, she says in an interview with the PA news agency. 
The film received its cinema release in the spring of 2000 to mixed reviews.

In the same year Helen also appeared in "Angels at my Bedside", a short film directed by David about two angels who visit a newly deceased individual.

After taking a break to look after her daughter, Helen returned as Rachel Bradley in the second series of ITV’s hit comedy-drama Cold Feet, which was broadcast in the autumn of 1999. 

Later that autumn she went to Canada to star in Swiss director Curt Truninger’s international co-production "Dead by Monday". In it Helen stars as Julie Matthews, a suicidal widow who enters into a suicide pact with a young, disillusioned writer (played by Tim Dutton.) Together they go on the road to the Niagara Falls to kill themselves in spectacular fashion. 

In early 2000 she was asked to participate in a seven-part mini-series to be aired during Easter week on BBC. The series consists of seven dramatic monologues by seven different inmates of a Victorian era insane asylum. Helen plays a servant girl in one of these stories who discovers Jesus on the night before his crucifixion.

During the spring and summer of 2000, filming began on a third series of Cold Feet series. The series was now hugely popular and the entire three series were sold to be broadcast  in America.

A completly different image saw Helen play MP Pandora Braithwaite in the latest Adrian Mole tv adaptation, "The Cappuccino Years".
Wearing a long blonde wig for her lastest role which continued the story of Adrian who is now 30, a chef and still pining for his love, Pandora.
 

As well as being a star of Tv, film and theatre, Helen has also made a host of voice overs for commercials, and is active in various charity's.

Written by Lee Holmes & Svein Antonsen