Imogen Stubbs was born in Northumberland, lived briefly in Portsmouth, where her father was a naval officer, and then moved with her parents to London, where they lived on an elderly river barge on the Thames. She was educated at two private schools, St Paul's Girls' School and Westminster School, where Stubbs was one of the "token girls" in the sixth form, and Exeter College, Oxford, gaining a First Class degree. Her acting career started with Irina in a student production of Three Sisters at t