Wanamaker: Keeping it in the family

Robert Lindsay and Zoe Wanamaker in My Family

Actress and US citizen Zoe Wanamaker has been made an honorary CBE, seven years after her actor father received the same accolade.

She is a highly respected actress, having spent some 25 years at the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre.

Her performance in Sophocles' Electra in 1999 led to a Tony nomination - although she was beaten that year by Dame Judi Dench.

Despite her numerous stage roles, she found widespread public fame after her TV role in Love Hurts with Adam Faith, in the early 90s.

A second series of her popular sitcom My Family has been commissioned by the BBC after it became the highest-rating BBC One sitcom for five years.

Avoiding Shakespeare

Ms Wanamaker was also in the epic BBC production of Gormenghast. She will next be on TV screens in the spring, in Adrian Mole: The Cappucino Years.

She is currently filming the eagerly-awaited Harry Potter movie, in which she plays Madame Hooch, and has been in great demand for TV projects in recent months.

Wanamaker was born in New York, but moved to England when she was three.

She went to Central School of Speech and Drama, and left in 1970 determined to avoid Shakespearian roles as a reaction to her father Sam's obsession with the playwright.

Sam Wanamaker, an American Jew, left the USA during the McCarthy era.

Father honoured

His lifelong dream was to rebuild Shakespeare's Globe on the South Bank.

He founded the Shakespeare Globe Trust, the International Shakespeare Globe Centre and the Shakespeare Globe Museum.

Persevered for more than 20 years, he overcame a series of monumental obstacles.

In July 1993, Sam Wanamaker was made a CBE, in recognition of the "remarkable contribution he has made to relations between Britain and the US and, of course, for all he has done on behalf of the Shakespeare Globe project".