Shelley Conn

Shelley Conn (born 1976) is an English actress of Sri Lankan and British ancestry.

The great niece of actress Merle Oberon (Oberon's brother was Conn's grandfather), Conn trained at Bretton Hall.

She was a student at Cranbourne School, Basingstoke Hampshire.

After drama school, Conn had a series of bit-parts in various British films, before coming to prominence in Series Five of the popular BBC One series Down to Earth. In 2001 she picked up the role of PC Miriam Da Silva in BBC1's Mersey Beat and an irregularly recurring role in Casualty - both of which starred her current boyfriend, Jonathan Kerrigan.

In 2002, Conn made her West End theatre stage debut in three plays in December 2002, after transferring from Stratford on Avon in the Royal Shakespeare Company's Jacobean Season at the Gielgud Theatre - The Island Princess, Eastward Ho! and The Roman Actor.

Conn played Princess Pondicherry opposite Johnny Depp in Tim Burton's 2005 production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Conn has now developed her roles between all three media (television, film and theatre), with a series of leading roles in various small budget European as well as British films; BBC character dramas such as The Innocence Project; and occasional returns to the RSC.

Conn starred as Ashika Chandiramani in the BBC series Party Animals.

In early 2008, Conn starred as Miranda Hill in The Palace on Mondays, as Jessica in Mistresses on Tuesdays and as Neela Sahjani in Trial & Retribution on Thursdays.

She also appeared in the second series of Mistresses, which aired in 2009.

She also recently appeared as Claire in Dead Set.

Conn lives in London, and is dating fellow Mersey Beat and now Holby City actor Jonathan Kerrigan.