Gina Bellman (born 10 July 1966 in Auckland, New Zealand) is a New Zealand-born British actress.
She's most famous for her performances as Jane Christie on the BBC BritCom Coupling and as grifter Sophie Devereaux on the TNT Crime Dramedy TV series Leverage for which she was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress in Television, but lost to fellow New Zealand alumna Lucy Lawless.
In July 2005, she married Lucho Brieva. Their marriage lasted for 2 years and they divorced in 2007. She began dating Zaab Sethna and they welcomed a daughter, Romy, in 2009. The couple wed in 2013.
Selected Filmography
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Live-Action Films
- King David (1985) as Tamar
- Secret Friends (1991) as Helen
- Everything I Like (1992) as Ann
- Leon The Pig Farmer (1992) as Lisa
- Horse Opera (1993) as Sandra / Marion
- Silent Trigger (1996) as Clegg Spotter
- David (1997) as Michal
- Ted And Ralph (2000) as Henrietta Spain
- Paranoid (2000) as Eve
- Seven Days To Live (2000) as Claudia
- Subterrain (2001) as Junkie Spirit
- Married Unmarried (2001) as Amanda
- Sitting Ducks (2003) as Christine
- Zerophilia (2005) as Sydney
- Permanent Vacation (2007) as Kathleen Bury
- Die Habenichtse (2016) as Leila
Live-Action Series
- Into The Labyrinth (1982) as Christine
- Grange Hill (1983) as Trudy
- Mussolini The Untold Story (1985) as Gina Ruberti
- Only Fools and Horses (1989) as Carmen
- Screen Two (1989) as Greta
- Blackeyes (1989) as Blackeyes
- The Storyteller (1991) as Eurydice
- Little Napoleons (1994) as Liz Blakemore
- Scene (1996) as Athene Nike
- Sharman (1996) as Kiki
- Jonathan Creek (1999) as Samantha
- Coupling (2000 — 2004) as Jane Christie
- Waking the Dead (2003) as Frannie Henning
- The Last Detective (2005) as Caroline
- Hotel Babylon (2007) as Marina Stol
- Jekyll (2007) as Claire Jackman
- Nearly Famous (2007) as Traci Reed
- Heroes And Villains (2007) as Catherine Carteaux
- The Wrong Door (2008) as Pilot Instructor / Jill
- Leverage (2008 — 2012) as Sophie Devereaux
- Leverage: Redemption (2021-present)
- Ripper Street (2013) as Jemima Swann
- Emerald City (2017) as Karen
- Henry IX (2017) as Lady Leonara
This actress provides examples of:
- The Cameo: She has a background cameo appearance in the first episode of the US remake of Coupling where she walks through the crowd and passes behind the couch.
- Fake Brit: She was born in New Zealand to English parents and moved back to the UK when she was eleven, so her accent is genuine which lands her many roles as a Brit.
- Hide Your Pregnancy/ Real Life Writes the Plot: Done on an episode of Leverage by holding a bomb to her belly and later stuffing her in a coffin. At the end of the episode, she goes on a journey to "find herself"; the next episode, she's only present in phone calls from the main team, usually shot from the chest up behind a bar or in the back seat of a cab. Of course, she came back for "The Maltese Falcon Job" and was running around on a freighter while seven-and-a-half months pregnant (mostly by wearing a very long, thick coat and being shot from the stomach up).
- Plays Great Ethnics: She's a New Zealander of Russian/Polish Jewish descent and has dark enough coloring that she passes convincingly as the mother of a Latina character in Emerald City (played by an actually Latina actress). In-universe, her character in Leverage is this, playing characters from South Africa, India, and Britain, among others, because of her role as a grifter.
