Who is Yasmine Akram? Bio, Age, Net Worth, Career & Sherlock 2026

Yasmine Akram is an Irish-Pakistani actress, writer, and comedian who turned 44 on March 11, 2026, and television viewers around the world know her best as Janine Hawkins in the third series of Sherlock. She was born on March 11, 1982, in Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, and her family moved to Drogheda in Ireland when she was only 18 months old.

Her father came from Pakistan, her mother Mona came from Drogheda, and her sister Masooma grew up beside her in the same Irish town. Yasmine Akram built her career on stage, on radio, and on screen, moving from youth theatre in Drogheda to drama school in London and then to leading British and Irish television shows. No reliable public figure exists for her net worth, and she keeps her private life out of the press, so her work, not her wealth, tells her story in full today.

Yasmine Akram Quick Bio / Wiki

Who Is Yasmine Akram?

Yasmine Akram is an Irish-Pakistani actress, writer, and comedian whose work spans stage, radio, film, and television. She is best known to a worldwide audience as Janine Hawkins in the third series of Sherlock, the hit BBC drama starring Benedict Cumberbatch. Yet Sherlock is only one part of her story. Yasmine Akram is also a playwright whose first play became an award winning film, a radio writer and performer, a stand up comedy act, and a series regular in some of the best loved British and Irish television shows of the past ten years.

Her career is unusual because she has built it on three tracks at once. She acts. She writes. She makes people laugh. Few performers move so easily from a serious stage play to a radio comedy show to a prime time drama. Yasmine Akram does all three, and she has done so since her teens. Her path began in youth theatre in a small Irish town, took her to one of the finest drama schools in London, and then brought her back to Irish stories on stage, on radio, and on screen.

Yasmine Akram Early Life and Family

Yasmine Akram was born on March 11, 1982, in Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. Sharjah is one of the seven emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates, and it sits on the shores of the Arabian Gulf. Her birth there gave her a start in life far from the Irish town where she would grow up, and it is part of what makes her background so rich and so mixed.

Her family moved to Drogheda in Ireland when Yasmine Akram was only 18 months old. Drogheda is a historic town in County Louth, on the east coast of Ireland, north of the capital city. It was in Drogheda that she spent her childhood and her teenage years, and it was there that she first found the stage.

Her father came from Pakistan. Her mother Mona came from Drogheda itself, and she still lives in the town today. Yasmine Akram has a sister called Masooma, and the two girls grew up together in Drogheda. The family home gave her two cultures at once. She grew up Irish, in an Irish town, with Irish friends and Irish schools, and she also grew up with a Pakistani father and a Pakistani side to her family. That mix of Irish and Pakistani heritage shapes her voice as a writer and as a performer, and it runs through much of her comedy work.

Drogheda gave her more than a home. It gave her a theatre. The town has a strong arts scene, and its youth theatre groups gave local teenagers a place to act, to write, and to learn how a show is put together. Yasmine Akram took that chance early, and she never let it go.

How Old Is Yasmine Akram?

Yasmine Akram is 44 years old in 2026. She was born on March 11, 1982, and she turned 44 on March 11, 2026. Her birthday falls in early spring each year, and she will turn 45 on March 11, 2027.

Her zodiac sign is Pisces, the sign for people born from February 19 to March 20. Pisces is often linked with creativity, feeling, and imagination, and those traits fit a performer who writes plays, tells jokes, and plays a wide mix of parts. Yasmine Akram belongs to a generation of Irish actors who came of age in the early 2000s and who now lead British and Irish screens in their forties.

Age has never held her back. She was acting on stage as a teenager, she was writing for national radio in her twenties, and she was playing a key part in one of the biggest television dramas in the world by her early thirties. In her forties she is still adding new credits, with recent work in Bad Sisters and Beyond Paradise showing that her career keeps moving forward.

Yasmine Akram Education and Early Theatre

Yasmine Akram found the stage when she was 14 years old. At that age she began to work with two local groups, the Calipo Theatre and the Picture Company, that gave young people in Drogheda a chance to act and to make theatre. She stayed with those groups through her teenage years, and they gave her a grounding in live performance that no classroom could match.

Her early stage work with Calipo Theatre Company took place at the Droichead Arts Centre in Drogheda. In 1998 she played Foxy in Love Is The Drug. In 1999 she played Joanne in Xaviers. In 2000 she took on various roles in Makin Hits, and in 2001 she played Helen in Getting 2 Level 10. Each of those shows was a step forward, and each one taught her more about voice, movement, timing, and working as part of a cast.

After her school years she left Ireland for London to train as an actor. She studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, known to all as RADA. RADA is one of the oldest and most respected drama schools in the world, and its graduates fill the stages and screens of Britain. Yasmine Akram graduated from RADA with a degree in acting, and the training gave her the craft to match the raw talent she had shown as a teenager in Drogheda.

Her time at RADA also gave her a taste of classic theatre. While she was a student she took on parts in plays such as Touched, Barbarians, Scenes from the Big Picture, Mouthful of Birds, The Beggars Opera, Ashgirl, Thark, The Duchess of Malfi, Alcestis, As You Like It, Faust, and Ghosts. Those parts ran from comedy to tragedy, from classic texts to new work, and they showed the breadth that would mark her whole career.

Yasmine Akram Career Beginnings

Yasmine Akram made her television debut in 2004 in the comedy drama series Love Is the Drug, playing Aisling in one episode. Her first screen credit had come two years earlier, in 2002, when she played Rita Quimbly in an episode of A Scare at Bedtime. Those early parts were small, but they put her on screen and they gave her a start in a tough trade.

After she graduated from drama school, Yasmine Akram began to write short comic scripts for the BBC and Channel 4. Sketch writing is a hard craft. Each sketch must set up a joke, build it, and land it in only a few minutes. Yasmine Akram learned that craft well, and it opened doors for her in radio and in television comedy.

She also began to host shows for BBC Radio, and radio would become a lasting part of her career. Radio suits her. It lets her voice, her timing, and her writing carry the show, and it lets her reach listeners across Britain and Ireland without a camera in sight.

Her early television work after drama school built up year by year. In 2010 she played Yana in an episode of Peep Show, the cult comedy that ran for many years on Channel 4. She also appeared in LOL, the Channel 4 sketch comedy show. In 2013 she played a restaurant manager in an episode of Common Ground, took on various parts in two episodes of Its Kevin, and played a check in girl in one episode of London Irish, the Channel 4 comedy about young Irish people living in London.

Each of those parts added to her variety as a performer. She could play comedy, she could play drama, and she could slip into a small part and make it count. Casting directors began to notice her, and bigger parts soon followed.

Yasmine Akram in Sherlock as Janine Hawkins

The part that made Yasmine Akram famous around the world came in 2014. She was cast as Janine Hawkins in the third series of Sherlock, the BBC drama that brings Arthur Conan Doyle’s great detective into modern London. Benedict Cumberbatch played Sherlock Holmes, and Martin Freeman played Dr John Watson. Yasmine Akram played Janine, the woman who becomes part of Sherlock’s life in the series.

She appeared in two episodes of the third series. Her character first turns up at the wedding of John Watson and Mary Morstan, where Janine serves as Mary’s maid of honour and Sherlock serves as best man. The wedding scene is one of the most loved scenes in the whole run of Sherlock, and Janine sits at the heart of it. From there her story grows, as Sherlock draws her into his world and as she learns that his interest in her is not what it first seems.

Yasmine Akram learned that she had won the part in an email from her agent, and the news reached her while she was out with a friend in Borough Market in London. She has said that she did not know what she was getting into when she took the part, and that the scale of the show and the passion of its fans took her by surprise. Sherlock had fans in every country, and Janine became a talking point among them at once.

She came back to the part in 2016 in the special episode The Abominable Bride. In that special, which sets Sherlock and Watson in Victorian London, the same part carried the name Janine Donlevy. The change of name fits the special, which reworks the modern show in a Victorian setting, and it is a detail that fans of the show still note today. Yasmine Akram played the part in both forms, modern and Victorian, and she made it her own in each one.

Janine Hawkins remains her best known television part. It is the part that viewers name first when they hear her name, and it is the part that opened the door to the series regular roles that followed. Yet it is also a part that shows her skill as an actor. Janine is warm, funny, sharp, and hurt in turn, and Yasmine Akram plays each shade of her without ever losing the thread of who the woman is.

Yasmine Akram as a Writer and Playwright

Writing has always run beside acting in the career of Yasmine Akram. She wrote short comic scripts for the BBC and Channel 4 soon after she left drama school, and she has kept writing ever since. Her best known work as a writer is a play that began on a small stage in Ireland and ended up as an award winning film.

In 2010 she wrote and staged her first play, 10 Dates with Mad Mary. The play is a solo piece about a young woman’s hard time after she leaves prison. It is a tough, funny, and moving piece, and Yasmine Akram performed it herself at the Project Arts Centre in Ireland in 2010. The play won praise from critics, and it showed that she could write as well as she could act.

The play was then adapted into a feature film, A Date for Mad Mary, which reached screens in 2016. The film was made by Element Pictures, and it was directed by Darren Thornton. It starred Seana Kerslake in the lead part, and it told the same story of a young woman trying to find her feet after prison. The film won the Irish Film and Television Award for Best Film in 2017, and it also won Best Irish Feature at the Galway Film Festival in the same year. Those two wins marked a high point in the career of Yasmine Akram as a writer, and they showed that a play first staged in a small arts centre could reach the top of Irish film.

She has kept writing for screen and radio since then. Her writing credits include the short film War Paint, which she also starred in, and work on the television shows Love Is Dead, The Reluctant Landlord, and Flack. She also co-wrote work for BBC Radio 4. Writing lets her shape her own stories, and it lets her bring Irish voices and Irish humour to audiences in Britain and beyond.

Yasmine Akram Comedy Work with Ford and Akram

Comedy is the third strand of the career of Yasmine Akram, and it may be the one that suits her best. She writes and performs as half of the London comedy pair Ford and Akram, alongside English comedian Louise Ford. The duo met through the London comedy scene, and they found that their styles fit well together.

Ford and Akram took a live show to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2011, and the show was directed by Alistair McGowan. The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the largest arts festival in the world, and a slot there is a mark of quality for any comedy act. The duo won praise for their sharp writing, their timing, and their chemistry on stage.

She also worked with Aisling Bea, one of the best known Irish comedians of her generation. In 2013 Yasmine Akram and Aisling Bea co-wrote and co-presented Irish Micks and Legends for BBC Radio 4. The show took old Irish myths and legends and retold them with modern jokes and modern voices. It ran for two series, and it let Yasmine Akram bring Irish stories to a British radio audience in a fresh and funny way. She had already worked with Aisling Bea on the Channel 4 sketch comedy LOL, and the two writers shared a love of Irish humour and Irish storytelling.

Her comedy work also took her onto panel shows. She appeared as a panellist on Never Mind the Buzzcocks in December 2014, and she appeared on the BBC Radio 4 show The News Quiz in October of the same year. She has also appeared on Sweat the Small Stuff and Virtually Famous. Panel shows test a comedian in a live setting, with no script to hide behind, and Yasmine Akram held her own on each one.

Yasmine Akram Television Career After Sherlock

Sherlock changed the career of Yasmine Akram. After 2014 she began to win series regular parts in British and Irish television, and she became a familiar face in living rooms across Britain and Ireland.

In 2014 she played Amanda Menton in The Centre, the RTE sitcom, as a series regular. The Centre was filmed in Ireland, and it brought her back to Irish television after years of work in London. From 2014 to 2015 she played Parvadi in Stella, the Sky1 comedy drama set in a Welsh valley, as a recurring character across two series. Stella was a warm and funny show, and Parvadi gave her a part with heart as well as humour.

In 2015 she played Rosa in Asylum, the BBC miniseries, and Lara in Undercover, the Dave comedy, as a series regular. Undercover was Dave’s first scripted comedy, and Yasmine Akram played Lara, the tough daughter of an Armenian mobster who grows wary of the undercover police officer in their midst. The same year she played Kelly in two episodes of Unforgotten, the ITV crime drama, and Gemma in an episode of Count Arthur Strong.

In 2016 she played Nigella Lawson in an episode of Murder in Successville, and she played herself in the miniseries Outsiders. From 2016 to 2018 she played Maria Jones, known to all as Jonesy, in Lovesick, the Netflix comedy drama about a group of friends in Glasgow. Jonesy is one of her best loved parts. She joined the show in its second series and stayed through its third series, and her character brought warmth, wit, and a sharp tongue to the group.

Her later television work kept the same pace. In 2018 she played Hazel in Damned, the Channel 4 comedy, Gemma Stone in Action Team on ITV2, Audrey Ballard in three episodes of Humans on Channel 4, and Samara in three episodes of Women on the Verge. From 2018 to 2019 she played Julie in The Reluctant Landlord on Sky One as a series regular, and from 2018 to 2020 she played Helen in There She Goes on BBC Four as a series regular. In 2019 she played Eimear Day in Gold Digger, the BBC miniseries. In 2020 she played Hannah in Avenue 5, the HBO comedy, and Ashley Dillon in an episode of Flack.

From 2022 to 2024 she played Nora Garvey in Bad Sisters, the dark comedy drama that became one of the most talked about shows of its year. Bad Sisters follows a group of sisters in Ireland, and Nora Garvey is a recurring part across the show. The part brought Yasmine Akram back to an Irish story on a world stage, and it showed that her career was still growing a decade after Sherlock. In 2023 she played Carol Meadows in an episode of Beyond Paradise, the BBC crime drama.

Yasmine Akram Film Roles

Yasmine Akram has worked in film as well as on television and on stage, and her film parts show the same variety as the rest of her work. In 2016 she played a nurse in London Town, the film about a young boy who meets the band The Clash in London in the late 1970s. In 2018 she played Anna in Metal Heart, the Irish film about two sisters growing up, which was made by Suburban Films.

She also wrote and starred in the short film War Paint, which was funded by Creative England. War Paint let her bring her writing and her acting together in one short piece, and it showed her skill as a film maker as well as a performer. Her film work is smaller in size than her television work, but it is no less a part of her career, and the film version of her play A Date for Mad Mary remains her greatest success on the big screen.

Yasmine Akram Stage Career

The stage is where Yasmine Akram began, and it is where she has kept coming back through her career. After her youth theatre work in Drogheda and her training at RADA, she took on stage parts in London and in Ireland that showed her breadth as a live performer.

In 2009 she played Paulina in The Wicked Lady at the New Vic Theatre in Newcastle under Lyme. In 2010 she performed Ellamenope Jones at the Project Arts Centre in Ireland. In 2011 she played Karelma in The Big Fellah at the Lyric Theatre in London, working with the Out of Joint Theatre Company. In 2017 she played Tara in The Retreat at the Park Theatre in London, in a production directed by Kathy Burke.

The stage demands a different skill from the screen. There is no second take, no edit, and no camera to hide behind. Yasmine Akram learned that skill as a teenager in Drogheda, she honed it at RADA, and she has used it ever since. Her stage work may be less known than her television work, but it is the base on which the rest of her career stands.

Yasmine Akram Radio Work and Presenting

Radio has been a steady thread in the career of Yasmine Akram since she left drama school. She hosted shows for BBC Radio early in her career, and she has written and performed for BBC Radio 4 many times since. Her best known radio work is Irish Micks and Legends, which she co-wrote and co-presented with Aisling Bea for BBC Radio 4. The show ran for two series, and it let her retell Irish myths with a modern comic voice.

She has also worked on BBC Radio 4 shows such as Funny Bones, where she served as narrator and writer, and Tim Key’s Late Night Poetry Programme. She has appeared as a panellist on The Leak with Tom Price for BBC Radio Wales, and she has taken part in shows such as Loser World Cup and Whats the Story. Her radio work shows a writer and performer who is at home with her voice alone, and who can hold an audience with words and timing.

Presenting is a further strand of her work. She presented the RTE series Irish in Wonderland, which took her back to Irish television as a host rather than an actor. She also worked as a presenter on Billionaire B and B. Presenting lets her be herself on screen, rather than a character, and it shows the warmth and humour that her fans know from her comedy work.

Yasmine Akram Net Worth

No reliable public figure exists for the net worth of Yasmine Akram. She has never spoken in public about her earnings, and no bank, studio, or trade body has ever published a verified figure for her wealth. The numbers that appear on some web pages differ wildly from one page to the next, and none of them comes from a source that can be checked. For that reason this post prints no net worth figure at all.

What is clear is that Yasmine Akram has earned her living from acting, writing, comedy, radio, and presenting since 2002. She has worked on the BBC, Channel 4, ITV, Sky, Netflix, RTE, and HBO, and she has written a play that became an award winning film. That is a long and steady career in a trade where few people last so long, and it speaks for itself without any need for a made up number.

Yasmine Akram Relationship Status

The relationship status of Yasmine Akram is not publicly confirmed. She keeps her private life out of the press, and she has never spoken in public about a partner, a marriage, or children. She seldom talks about her personal life in interviews, and she has kept that part of her life private through her whole career.

Some web pages claim to know about her love life, but none of them names a partner from a source that can be checked, and none of them quotes her on the subject. The honest answer is that her private life is her own, and this post will not guess at it. What her fans do know is her work, and her work is public, plentiful, and easy to enjoy.

Yasmine Akram Social Media

Yasmine Akram keeps a low profile online, and no official social media handle for her is listed in her agency profile. Web pages disagree with each other about whether she is active on social media at all, and none of them links to an account that can be checked against an official source. For that reason this post prints no social media handle for her.

Fans who want to follow her work can do so through the shows she appears in and through her agency profile, which lists her latest credits in television, film, stage, and radio. That profile is the best place to keep up with what she is doing next.

Yasmine Akram Career Timeline

Yasmine Akram Television Filmography

Yasmine Akram Film and Stage Credits

Yasmine Akram Awards and Recognition

A Date for Mad Mary is the film version of the first play written by Yasmine Akram, 10 Dates with Mad Mary. The two wins in 2017 mark the highest honour her writing has received so far, and they stand as proof that her work as a writer matches her work as an actor. She has not won a major acting award to date, but her long run of series regular parts, her place in the cast of Sherlock, and her recent work in Bad Sisters show that casting directors and audiences value her highly.

Yasmine Akram Writing Credits

Frequently Asked Questions About Yasmine Akram

1. Who is Yasmine Akram?

Yasmine Akram is an Irish-Pakistani actress, writer, and comedian. She is best known as Janine Hawkins in the third series of Sherlock, and she is also known as a playwright, a radio writer, and one half of the comedy duo Ford and Akram.

2. How old is Yasmine Akram?

Yasmine Akram is 44 years old in 2026. She was born on March 11, 1982, and she turned 44 on March 11, 2026. She will turn 45 on March 11, 2027.

3. Where was Yasmine Akram born?

Yasmine Akram was born in Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates on March 11, 1982. Her family moved to Drogheda in Ireland when she was only 18 months old, and Drogheda is the town where she grew up.

4. What is the ethnicity of Yasmine Akram?

Yasmine Akram is Irish-Pakistani. Her father came from Pakistan and her mother Mona came from Drogheda in Ireland. She grew up in Ireland with both cultures in her family home.

5. What is the net worth of Yasmine Akram?

No reliable public figure exists for the net worth of Yasmine Akram. She has never spoken in public about her earnings, and no verified figure has ever been published, so this post prints no net worth number for her.

6. Who did Yasmine Akram play in Sherlock?

Yasmine Akram played Janine Hawkins in the third series of Sherlock in 2014. She appeared in two episodes, and she came back to the part in the 2016 special The Abominable Bride, where the same part carried the name Janine Donlevy.

7. Is Yasmine Akram married?

The relationship status of Yasmine Akram is not publicly confirmed. She keeps her private life out of the press and has never spoken in public about a partner, a marriage, or children.

8. What is A Date for Mad Mary?

A Date for Mad Mary is the 2016 film version of the first play written by Yasmine Akram, 10 Dates with Mad Mary. She wrote and performed the play at the Project Arts Centre in Ireland in 2010, and the film won the Irish Film and Television Award for Best Film in 2017 and Best Irish Feature at the Galway Film Festival in the same year.

9. Who is Jonesy in Lovesick?

Jonesy is the character played by Yasmine Akram in Lovesick, the Netflix comedy drama. Her full name in the show is Maria Jones, and she played the part from 2016 to 2018 across the second and third series of the show.

10. What is Ford and Akram?

Ford and Akram is the London based comedy duo made up of Yasmine Akram and English comedian Louise Ford. The duo writes and performs live comedy together, and they took a live show to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2011.

11. What did Yasmine Akram study?

Yasmine Akram studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, known as RADA. She graduated with a degree in acting. She began working in theatre at age 14 with the Calipo Theatre and the Picture Company in Drogheda.

12. What shows has Yasmine Akram been in?

Yasmine Akram has been in Sherlock, Lovesick, Stella, Undercover, Asylum, Unforgotten, The Centre, Damned, Action Team, Humans, Women on the Verge, The Reluctant Landlord, There She Goes, Gold Digger, Avenue 5, Flack, Bad Sisters, and Beyond Paradise, as well as Peep Show, The Midnight Beast, Count Arthur Strong, Murder in Successville, and Outsiders.

Conclusion

Yasmine Akram is an actress, writer, and comedian who has built a long and varied career from a small Irish town to the biggest screens in Britain. She was born in Sharjah, she grew up in Drogheda, she trained at RADA, and she has worked on stage, on radio, and on screen since 2002. Her part as Janine Hawkins in Sherlock made her known around the world, her play 10 Dates with Mad Mary became an award winning film, and her comedy work with Louise Ford and Aisling Bea made her a familiar voice on BBC Radio 4.

Her later work in Lovesick, Bad Sisters, and Beyond Paradise shows that she is still growing as a performer in her forties. She keeps her private life out of the press, she lets her work speak for her, and her work speaks well. Yasmine Akram is one of the most versatile Irish performers of her generation, and her story is still being written.