Lalla Ward (the Honourable Sarah Ward) (born June 28, 1951) is an actress and illustrator best known for playing the part of Romana in the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who. Her stage name, "Lalla", comes from her attempts as a toddler to pronounce her own name.

The daughter of Edward Ward, Viscount Bangor, she began her acting career in Hammer horror films, and played the teenage daughter of The Duchess of Duke Street in the popular BBC drama series of the 1970s. She was the second actress to play Romana, a female Time Lord with the ability to regenerate. She was chosen to replace Mary Tamm in the part, after a guest appearance in another part in the Doctor Who story "The Armageddon Factor" in 1979.

Following her exit from the series in 1980, she married her co-star, actor Tom Baker that December, but the marriage lasted only sixteen months. Douglas Adams, who worked with her on Doctor Who introduced her to his friend Richard Dawkins, biologist and author of such books as The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker, whom he had met after Dawkins sent him a fan letter. They met at Adams' fortieth birthday party in 1992. She married Dawkins the same year. She illustrates his books and also wrote two books on knitting in the 1980s.

Ward has seldom appeared on screen since her marriage to Dawkins. However, she has reprised the character of Romana in the 1993 charity special Dimensions in Time and in several Doctor Who audio plays produced by Big Finish Productions.

External links

• Biography at imdb (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0911677/bio)