Angela Bruce's biography in the programme for the Leicester Haymarket's A Midsummer Night's Dream states that she began her acting career when she "was spotted in the audience during a production of Hair in Newcastle's Theatre Royal." She was born in Leeds to a West Indian father and a white mother and was raised by an adoptive family in the northeast (http://www.bbc.co.uk/wear/features/2003/03/angelabruce.shtml).