Born: 19th September 1940 (as Caroline Frances John)
Died: 5th June 2012 (aged 71 years)
Episodes Broadcast: 1970, 1983, 1993

Caroline John was born in York and raised in Kenilworth, Warwickshire. As a child she aspired to be a dancer like her mother, but her interests turned to acting during her teenage years. John's first professional exposure came as an extra on the 1955 Kenneth More film Raising A Riot. She spent a year in France working as an au pair and then suffered a rejection by the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, before gaining acceptance to the Central School of Speech and Drama. John then embarked on a career in the theatre, including a season with the Royal Shakespeare Company and several years with the National Theatre, to which she was recruited by Laurence Olivier. It was through the National that she met actor Geoffrey Beevers; they would marry in 1970.

While John was enjoying success on the stage, she was struggling to find roles on television; sporadic appearances during the Sixties included episodes of Teletale and The Power Game. In frustration, she decided to circulate a new casting photo for which she was clad only in a bikini. Director James Cellan Jones spotted it and forwarded it to Doctor Who producers Peter Bryant and Derrick Sherwin, who soon offered John the role of Cambridge scientist Liz Shaw for the show's seventh season -- the first to feature a new, Earthbound format to introduce Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor. Following her debut in Spearhead From Space, John's third serial, The Ambassadors Of Death, provided her with the opportunity to work alongside both her husband, who played Private Johnson, and her brother, production assistant Nicholas John.

In Inferno, John also played Liz Shaw's evil doppelganger from a parallel world

Unfortunately, John quickly became dispirited with playing Liz: she invested considerable time learning terminology appropriate to her character's background, only to find that Doctor Who barely took its science seriously. Furthermore, new producer Barry Letts felt that the character was too knowledgeable and sophisticated to serve as a target for audience identification, and decided to drop Liz after one season. As a result, John's fourth serial, Inferno, was also her last, although it provided the opportunity for some variety as she also played Liz's evil doppelganger from a parallel world. Sadly, John misunderstood the reasons for her termination, assuming that Letts was dissatisfied with her acting; it was only years later that she learned the truth. Nonetheless, Season Seven would likely have John's only year on Doctor Who regardless, as she became pregnant early in 1970. She and Beevers would have two sons, Ben and Tom, and a daughter, Daisy. Beevers later returned to Doctor Who to play a short-lived incarnation of the villainous Master in 1981's The Keeper Of Traken and then in various Doctor Who audio dramas from Big Finish Productions.

John kept up steady work in the theatre and on the radio during the first half of the Seventies. Her television appearances included programmes such as The Doctors, The Rivals Of Sherlock Holmes, Z Cars and Crown Court, while she was also in the 1973 Ian Henry movie Assassin. By the time her second child was born in 1975, however, John had decided to put her career on pause while she raised her family. Ironically, when she decided to return to acting, it was Barry Letts who provided her with her first television role, in a 1982 adaptation of The Hound Of The Baskervilles starring the former Fourth Doctor, Tom Baker, as Sherlock Holmes. In 1983, John reprised Liz for a cameo appearance in the Doctor Who twentieth-anniversary special, The Five Doctors. Other Eighties television included episodes of A Dorothy L Sayers Mystery, A Very British Coup and The Bill, while The Razor's Edge was amongst her movie appearances.

The Nineties were John's most prolific decade on television, and she could be seen in everything from Wish Me Luck to Harry Enfield's Television Program to The Choir to Silent Witness. She was Liz Shaw again in the Doctor Who charity special Dimensions In Time, which celebrated the programme's thirtieth anniversary, as well as in several PROBE direct-to-video dramas from BBV. Having spent years assuming that both she and her character were derided by Doctor Who fans, John had now been pleasantly astonished to discover the affection with which she and Liz were actually held.

John's career continued into the twenty-first century, with appearances in Midsomer Murders, Vital Signs and Doctors; she also took a final role on the silver screen in Richard Curtis' 2003 crowd-pleaser Love Actually. In 2001, John made her first appearance in a Doctor Who audio drama from Big Finish Productions, playing Madame Salvadori in Dust Breeding opposite both her husband and the Seventh Doctor, Sylvester McCoy. She later played Liz Shaw for the company on several occasions, initially in The Blue Tooth, a 2007 entry in The Companion Chronicles. John died of cancer on June 5th, 2012. Beginning in 2019, her daughter, actress Daisy Ashford, inherited the role of Liz for Big Finish.