Tommy Jessop is an internationally recognized, multi award-winning film and television actor who has changed the way people look at life with Down Syndrome.

Tommy was the first actor with Down Syndrome to play the lead in a primetime TV drama, BAFTA nominated Coming Down the Mountain, the first to play Hamlet in the original language on mainstream stages, featured in the international Emmy-nominated BBC documentary Growing Up Downs, the first to become a full voting member of BAFTA and the first to present a BAFTA. In 2021 he received an honorary Doctor of Arts degree from the University of Winchester for services to the arts.

Television roles include Line of Duty (over 13 million viewers in the UK alone), Casualty, Holby City, Monroe, Doctors, roles on BBC Radio 4 including The Archers and The Climb. Tommy’s best actor awards include playing a boxer, a thief, a murderer in short films shown in the UK, US and Europe.

In 2021 Tommy created podcasts for LAD Bible and Spotlight and was featured several times in the Guardian, the Mail, Mirror, OK magazine, and other mainstream media and became an ambassador to Mencap and the NDSPG.

Tommy’s campaign for the Down Syndrome Act included a video message sent to every member of parliament, speeches outside parliament, inside the House of Lords and at a reception at the US Embassy, and interviews including on ITV news, Good Morning Britain, GB News, Times Radio, BBC Radio 4 Today, BBC Breakfast, the Times, the Express.

Tommy has made the invisible visible.