Born: 16th June 1940 (as Carole Ann Lillian Higgins)
Episodes Broadcast: 1963-1964, 1983, 1993, 2013

Born in the middle of an air raid in Ilford, Essex, Carole Ann Higgins' first exposure to the performing arts came in the form of dance lessons to address a spinal condition. At the age of eight, she appeared in a family film called The Last Load, and by her teens she was featured in advertisements and working as a model. She took the stage name “Carole Ann Ford” from her mother's maiden name, Fordham. In 1959 she married her agent, Walter Jokel, and a year later gave birth to a daughter, Miranda.

In the early Sixties, Ford's credits included the science-fiction film The Day Of The Triffids and television programmes such as Z Cars, Compact and Moonstrike. It was her appearance in a March 1963 episode of the thriller anthology Suspense which caught the eye of BBC director Waris Hussein. Several months later, Hussein remembered Ford when he was assigned to 100,000 BC, the first-ever Doctor Who story, and recommended her for the role of Susan Foreman. Now a twenty-three year old mother, Ford was initially reticent to play what she feared would just be a typical teenage girl. But she eventually warmed to the character after producer Verity Lambert convinced her that Susan would be more akin to a psychic version of Cathy Gale -- the glamorous, martial-arts wielding spy played by Honor Blackman in The Avengers. Doctor Who would even begin with an episode whose title nodded towards Susan's otherworldly pedigree: An Unearthly Child.

Ford found the early ambitions for Susan were underrealised on screen

Unfortunately, Ford soon found the early ambitions for her character were underrealised on screen. She became determined to leave Doctor Who after the expiry of her contract with The Dalek Invasion Of Earth. To her frustration, many of the roles she was subsequently offered hewed to the same teenaged template. This prompted Ford to concentrate primarily on the theatre, although she enjoyed some typecast-busting appearances in films such as The Great St Trinian's Bank Robbery and TV series such as Public Eye and Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads?.

Following her marriage to businessman Harry Kornhauser in 1974, Ford paused her acting career with the birth of her second daughter, Tara, the following year. The next several years saw Ford plagued by misfortune and ill-health, although she did return to the role of Susan to help celebrate Doctor Who's twentieth anniversary in The Five Doctors and then its thirtieth anniversary in Dimensions In Time. By the mid-Nineties, Ford had become a vocal coach; a rare acting role was in the 1994 video release Shakedown: The Return Of The Sontarans, an unofficial Doctor Who spin-off from DreamWatch Media.

In 2003, Ford joined Big Finish Productions' stable of Doctor Who actors, playing Susan in a number of audio dramas starting with the Doctor Who Unbound entry Auld Mortality. In 2013, she appeared in the comedic fiftieth-anniversary special The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, while also making a cameo appearance in the docudrama An Adventure In Space And Time, which recounted the formative years of Doctor Who. Here she played Joyce, the mother of a young Doctor Who fan, while Claudia Grant portrayed Ford herself.