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Bethzienna, a welsh actress and musician, made a massive impact with her appearances in the 2019 series of The Voice, selected and championed by both Jennifer Hudson and Tom Jones. But that was just the latest highlight of a career that's already taken Bethzienna on some incredible adventures, from movie sets to Buckingham Palace by way of an arts degree.
Her taste for the stage was developing by the time she was seven, when she started entering the Eisteddfod festival, doing so every year until she was 16. And joined an amateur dramatics association. "At school, the music and drama block were my escapism," she remembers, "School's tough, and kids can be a right pain, so that was my safe place." Still barely in her teens, Beth was spotted at an Eisteddfod performance by a television executive who was staging a Welsh Pop Idol show, called Wow Factor. She finished in the top three, as did future million-seller Duffy.
At just 15, she started song-writing in Welsh and released two singles, doing plenty of television and representing her country with performances in Paris and Berlin. There were also her days of performing with a big jazz band in, where she took inspiration from such greats as Ella Fitzgerald and Dinah Washington. At a friend's church, she sang gospel, while digging the great emotive storytellers on record from Otis Redding to Dolly Parton.
Bethzienna started working in television at the age of 16 as a body double for child actors. Her first stunt on a movie set being in the 2009 movie 'Skellig', standing in for actress Sky Bennett alongside Tim Roth. The acting ambition was instinctive. "I loved black and white musicals, because of their sense of being able to move, act, sing and tell a story. Even now, if I relay something that happened, I have to act it out. I love taking on a character and the idea of, just for a second, being in someone else's shoes."
She moved to London at 19 and was accepted by two drama schools, choosing Mountview in London, who then offered her a scholarship. What followed was three years that Bethzienna will never forget. She learned every aspect of drama, emerging as a BA with Honours, complete with a showcase event at the Criterion Theatre. She's gone on to put those talents to great use with appearances in Skins, Casualty, Our Girl, Warren, We Hunt Together. In 2018, she was lauded by The Guardian for her "impressive debut" in Theatre Clwyd's musical The Assassination of Katie Hopkins, which went on to win best musical at the 2018 UK Theatre Awards and had its successful revival at the Turbine Theatre in 2020.
As a songwriter, Bethzienna was invited onto one of Chris Difford's prestigious retreats, where she wrote with such vastly experienced British talents as Nik Kershaw, Gary Clark and Mark Nevin. That led, through a friend of Difford's, to Beth's work with the Never Such Innocence charity, which mentors the young with workshops about conflict and the legacy of World War I, via poetry, song and speech. The admirable organization runs a yearly, international cross-curricular competition that allows young people to have their say about war and conflict via the creative arts. In 2021 Bethzienna was thanked and congratulated by the Princess Royal for her contribution to 'Armed Forces Day' with her song she had written with the service children and recorded at Abbey road studios.
"I feel like I'm making a difference with Never Such Innocence, and I see it," she says. "I get to work with all kinds of children, and we write together, they submit it into the competition. If they win, they get to perform it at great places. Last year, the winners performed at Buckingham Palace, which was incredible. It's lovely to see the effect that music can have."
Singing with Tom Jones on The Voice was, of course, a dear-diary moment. "I'd dreamed my whole life of singing with him," she beams. "Musically it would be him and Dame Shirley Bassey that I've looked up to, because they come from the same area. So when it happened, I was thought 'I'm not going to let this slip.'
Performing on The Voice to such huge national and international acclaim has reaffirmed to this vivacious young all-round entertainer that her instincts are spot-on. "From going on the show, I have clarity in my artistry and in what makes me unique," says Bethzienna. "For a long time I was thinking, how can I incorporate acting and dancing and music and writing without me being all of these different characters? Now I feel it's all just come together as one."
Bethzienna released her debut single 'In Deep' in 2021.
