The famous faces in Marks & Spencer’s 2023 Christmas advert including a West End legend, TV star and pop icon

• Hannah Waddingham leads the star-studded cast in the new advert
• READ MORE: Hannah Waddingham, Sophie Ellis-Bextor and Zawe Ashton join Queer Eye’s Tan France in a very star-studded ad

Marks & Spencer have kicked off the festive season with a very star-studded advert.

From a huge West End star to a Marvel actress and stylist to the stars – the festive feature for the upmarket retailer certainly comes with star power.

Four British celebrities are featured in the ad, lead by Ted Lasso star Hannah Waddingham.

Joining Hannah is Queer Eye’s fashion guru Tan France, while Fresh Meat star Zawe Ashton and popstar Sophie Ellis-Bextor complete the line up.

Here, FEMAIL reveals who is who in the new advert… 

HANNAH WADDINGHAM: WEST END LEGEND TURNED TV STAR

M&S’ Christmas advert relies on celebrities such as Hannah Waddingham (pictured), Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Tan France and Zawe Ashton bring their star power to the campaign

Hannah (pictured in character as Septa Unella in Game of Thrones) appears in the infamous scene which sees Cersei perform the walk of atonement as Hannah’s character yells ‘Shame!’

A match made in Eurovision heaven? Hannah Waddingham pictured alongside Graham Norton at the singing competition finals on Saturday evening; the 48-year-old star proved a huge hit with fans – and even celebrities, with Nigella Lawson saying: ‘Just need to say I love Hannah Waddingham with every cell in my being.’

Hannah pictured playing Rebecca Welton in Ted Lasso – the owner of fictional football club Richmond FC

With decades of experience as a jobbing West End and telly actor, Hannah Waddingham has played Tonya Dyke in ITV’s hit series Benidorm, toured the UK with Spamalot and was cast as a police officer in ITV drama Murder, They Hope.  An appearance on Pointless Celebrities came in 2017. 

However, in 2019, with Wadddingham in her mid forties, the star finally got the long-awaited big break that would see her become a household name both in the US and the UK – the show’s won 11 Emmys – and she’s more than run with the opportunity since.

Waddingham, who shares a daughter with her former love Gianluca Cugnetto but is apparently happily single, bagged the role of Richmond FC owner Rebecca Welton in the hit Apple TV+ series Ted Lasso. 

Two Supporting Actress Emmy wins and a trip to the White House to meet President Joe Biden have followed since – but hosting Eurovision could be the Wandsworth-born stars smartest move yet – exposing her talent to one of the biggest single television audiences out there. 

Born and raised in South-West London, Hannah attended private girls’ school Streatham and Clapham High School before going on to study at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts.

Her father was a businessman but her maternal grandparents and her mother, Melodie Kelly, were all opera singers. Growing up in Wandsworth, South London, with her brother (who’s not in showbiz) she spent much of her time at the Coliseum, home of English National Opera, in London’s West End, where her mother sang for 27 years in the chorus.

‘My life was sitting in the stalls, watching the greats – Lesley Garrett, Bryn Terfel – this extraordinary music falling on my ears. But there was nothing la-di-da about us, we were a grounded, normal family – we saw how hard Mum worked.’

Attending a local private girls’ school, it never occurred to her that she’d go into anything other than showbusiness. ‘The force has always been strong. I remember thinking, ‘If your job isn’t singing or dancing, what do you do?’ I never had a plan B – not in an arrogant way, but that was my vocation.’

Sure enough, she went on to study at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts, bagging leads in West End and Broadway musicals and receiving Olivier nominations for her performances in Spamalot, Kiss Me, Kate and A Little Night Music. Yet when she tried to broaden into working in TV and film, she encountered downright snobbery. 

TAN FRANCE: DONCASTER-BORN A-LIST STYLIST

At a party somewhere else, Tan France — the fashion guy from Netflix hit Queer Eye — is wearing a white bow tie for no good reason

Family of four: Tan France and his husband Rob are ‘over the moon’ as they revealed they are expecting their second child

Queer Eye sees (L-R) Jonathan Van Ness, Bobby Berk, Tan, Antoni Porowski and Karamo Brown making over people’s lives in a bid to make them feel better about themselves 

He said: ‘Whenever one of my cast mate speaks its just Antoni Porowski or Bobby Berk, but with me in the press, it’s always Asian Immigrant Tan France’

Sibling: The couple are expecting the new addition to their family this summer, People revealed.

While he now rubs shoulders with A-list pals including Gigi Hadid and  Priyanka Chopra, the stylist first found fame starring as the stylist in the revamped series of Queer Eye.

Alongside Antoni Porowski, Bobby Berk, Karamo Brown and Jonathan Van Ness, Tan helps a ‘hero’ revamp their life.

Now on its seventh series, the show has reached critical acclaim with Tan picking up a hosting gig for Next in Fashion alongside Alexa Chung and went to star in Taylor Swift’s You Need to Calm Down Video.

 Praised as one of the few openly gay Muslim men on television, he lives in Utah with his husband Rob and their two children.

Tan often discusses prejudice he’s faced as a gay man and a British-Pakistani Muslim.

And the British-born fashion personality, who resides in Salt Lake City, Utah, plans to stay right where he is.

‘As an Asian, gay Muslim I was desperate to get away,’ Tan said in his documentary Tan France: Beauty & the Bleach. ‘I have been concerned about my skin color from the day I was born.

‘Growing up in Doncaster I always felt unsafe. I thought if I had whiter skin I wouldn’t be called a P*** every day.

Tan explained how a gang of men had attacked him while he was on his way to school because he was Pakistani.

‘I used to wake up thinking, ‘What trouble is my skin going to get me into today?’ It was about survival. Being able to get home without being attacked.’

‘I just thought, I need to find a way to date, to get a job, potentially a marriage,’ he revealed.

SOPHIE ELLIS-BEXTOR: POP ICON

We have Sophie turning a kitchen blow torch she is using to toast the meringue roof on her giant gingerbread house

Sophie is seen here in the music video for Murder on the Dancefloor

The daughter of producer Robin Bextor and Blue Peter presenter Janet Ellis, Sophie Ellis-Bextor has been a firm favourite of the British musicians set since her 2001 hit Murder of the Dance Floor.

The daughter of producer Robin Bextor and Blue Peter presenter Janet Ellis, Sophie Ellis-Bextor has been a firm favourite of the British musicians set since her 2001 hit Murder of the Dance Floor.

Now 44, the mother-of-five is still regularly performing with recent appearances at Glastonbury and at Melbourne’s Pride festival.

She shares sons Sonny, 18, Kit, 13, Ray, 10, Jesse, six, and Mickey, three, with husband Richard Jones, 41.

Sophie and Richard, the bass guitarist for the English rock band The Feeling, got married in Italy in 2005, three years after they first met.

While she has admitted to finding motherhood exhausting at times, she is open to having a sixth child.

Sophie explained on the Lockdown Parenting Hell podcast: ‘If I hadn’t had five, I think I would have just had one. It was all or nothing.’

ZAWE ASHTON: MARVEL STAR MARRIED TO TOM HIDDLESTON 

Accomplished actor and writer Zawe Ashton (pictured) adds to the star-studded Marks and Spencer Christmas ad this year 

Her impressive take as the plain-speaking and hilarious Vod Nordstorm in Channel 4’s Fresh Meat earned her a dedicated fan base in 2011

Zawe is married to A-list actor Tom Hiddleston (left). The pair first met in 2019 when they played husband and wife in a revival of Harold Pinter’s Betrayal

Accomplished actor and writer Zawe Ashton has been on the TV since she was six years old. 

Her impressive take as the plain-speaking and hilarious Vod Nordstorm in Channel 4’s Fresh Meat earned her a dedicated fan base in 2011. But the actress, 38, has long been accustomed to the arts, and her various roles across television, film, and theatre have earned her several accolades and awards, including the title of ‘Brit to watch’ in the 2020 Newport Beach Film Festival awards.

Born and bred in Hackney, east London, the star attended two primary schools and two secondaries. Since finding success at a young age, the star was bullied during her school year. 

But the actress-turned-writer is thankful for this: ‘It was a real adjustment period but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. The girls who bullied me were also some of the most hilarious people I’ve ever met. I’m writing about one of them now,’ she told DailyMail.com.

She stood out at school because she had been acting since the age of six, and her peers were seeing her on TV throughout her education – everything from Jackanory through to The Demon Headmaster.

She went to City and Islington College for her A-levels, and then to Manchester Metropolitan University for a degree in acting. But childhood summers were always spent in Uganda with her grandmother. Zawe’s awareness of her heritage plays a part in everything from the subject matter of her plays to her dress sense.

In 2019, Zawe found love with an A-list actor Tom Hiddleston. The pair first met in 2019 when they played husband and wife in a revival of Harold Pinter’s Betrayal. In June 2022, Tom confirmed he was set to wed his actress fiancée but kept tight-lipped about the romance, simply telling the LA Times: ‘I’m very happy’ and nothing more.

The couple secretly welcomed their first child together in October 2022 but have yet to disclose the name or sex of their baby.

Zawe’s career has gone from strength to strength, and she is now following in Tom’s footsteps with a new role in the Marvel universe. 

Tom played Loki in a plethora of past Marvel movies, starting with 2011’s Thor. Now, Zawe is playing Dar-Benn, the Kree revolutionary villain, in this year’s The Marvels film. 

The Marvel film is expected to hit cinema screens on November 10, not long after Zawe and Tom will have celebrated their baby’s first birthday.

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