Raquel Cassidy

Raquel Cassidy is an English actress. She played the role of Phyllis Baxter in the television series Downton Abbey (2013–2015), winning a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series. She has reprised the role for both the 2019 feature film of the same name and its 2022 sequel. She has played leading roles in other television series including Teachers, Party Animals, Moving Wallpaper, Lead Balloon, The Worst Witch and The Good Karma Hospital. Born to a Spanish mother and an English father, she was the third child and only daughter born to the couple. Born and brought up in Fleet, Hampshire, she was educated at Farnborough Hill Convent, and then Girton College, Cambridge, where she studied modern languages. She later[when?] pursued a PhD in biological anthropology, but abandoned it to pursue a career in acting.