Alexandra Kingston (born March 11, 1963, in Epsom, Surrey) is an English actress best known for her role as Elizabeth Corday on the NBC medical drama ER.
Kingston grew up in Epsom, on the outskirts of London, the eldest of three daughters of a butcher and his German wife. Her mother's younger brother is actor Walter Renneisen. She was inspired to pursue acting by one of her teachers at the all-girls grammar school she attended as a child. She later completed a two-year program at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and went on to join the prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company.
Kingston has appeared in a number of British television dramas, including Crocodile Shoes, Moll Flanders and The Knock. She has also guest starred on The Bill.
Her film credits include The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989), A Pin for the Butterfly (1994), Croupier (1998), and Boudica (Warrior Queen in the USA) (2003) in which she played Boudica.
Kingston, while no longer acting on TV, has made several TV movies as well as a few major motion pictures.
In 2006 she starred opposite Christian Slater in the West End (London, England) production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, playing Nurse Ratched to Slater's Randle Patrick McMurphy (characters famously portrayed by Louise Fletcher and Jack Nicholson in the 1975 film of the same name).
In 2006, Kingston claimed she was turned down for a role on ABC's Desperate Housewives for being too curvy. In the same article, she admits to considering and nearly attempting suicide after her split with ex-husband Ralph Fiennes.
Kingston met actor Ralph Fiennes while both were students at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. They were together for ten years before marrying in 1993. They divorced in 1997, after Fiennes left her for actress Francesca Annis, 18 years his senior. Kingston married her second husband, German writer and freelance journalist Florian Haertel, in 1998. They met the previous year on a blind date arranged by mutual friends. They have one child together, Salome Violetta, born March 28, 2001. Kingston's daughter, Salome, played the role of Corday and Greene's daughter Ella in the ER episode "On the Beach."
