Born: 9th September 1953 (as Janet Claire Mahoney)
Episodes Broadcast: 1981-1984, 2022

Janet Mahoney was born and raised in Brisbane, Australia. As a teenager, she accompanied her father when his work as a parasitologist took him the United States for a year. Mahoney won a scholarship to attend Queensland University, where she considered following her father into science. Instead, she opted for a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degree in English, with the goal of becoming a journalist. However, Mahoney soon discovered that an entry-level position as a reporter with the Australian Broadcasting Commission would earn her less money than the civil service job she was working to help pay for her education. Instead, she began to devote more time to the stage, having begun acting during her studies.

In 1977, a theatrical tour brought Mahoney to the United Kingdom, and she decided to stay. She was soon working with director Ken Campbell, and adopted her grandmother's surname -- Fielding -- for professional purposes, to avoid confusion with another Janet Mahoney. In 1980, she made her television debut in an installment of Hammer House Of Horror. Shortly thereafter, Fielding was cast as Australian flight attendant Tegan Jovanka, the newest companion in Doctor Who -- having lied about both her age and the height requirements for Antipodean stewardesses to help her land the job. She had been recommended to producer John Nathan-Turner by a colleague, who felt that she fit the desired characteristics -- bossy and Australian -- to a tee. Fielding made her debut in 1981's Logopolis, the final serial for Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor.

Audiences were tricked into thinking that Fielding had left Doctor Who after her first year

Although audiences were tricked into thinking that Fielding had left Doctor Who after her first year -- following the events of 1982's Time-Flight -- in fact she remained for almost the entirety of Peter Davison's tenure as the Fifth Doctor. Finally deciding to depart when Davison made it known that he was wrapping up his time on the show, Fielding recorded Tegan's bleak, tearful goodbye for Resurrection Of The Daleks in 1984. Nonetheless, she was back two stories later for The Caves Of Androzani, making a hallucinatory cameo during the Doctor's regeneration.

During her years on Doctor Who, Fielding could also be seen in episodes of Shelley and Minder and, in 1982, she married Daily Mirror foreign editor Nicholas Davies. Subsequent credits included Murphy's Mob, Hold The Back Page, Blind Justice and Parnell & The Englishwoman. In 1985, Fielding reprised the role of Tegan alongside Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor for an episode of the wish-fulfillment show Jim'll Fix It. By the early Nineties, however, Fielding was finding acting jobs increasingly scarce, and she blamed a combination of discrimination against women over thirty years of age and Doctor Who-related typecasting. As a result, Fielding became somewhat hostile towards Doctor Who for a time. Her marriage to Davies ended in divorce in 1991, with his involvement in international arms sales contributing to the breakdown in their relationship.

Fielding became an administrator with Women In Film And Television UK for three years and then, in 1994, she began working as an agent. One of her first clients was Paul McGann, and Fielding represented him when he appeared as the Eighth Doctor in Doctor Who (1996). During the early years of the new century, Fielding's antipathy towards Doctor Who diminished. In 2006, she starting appearing as Tegan in Big Finish Productions' range of Doctor Who audio dramas, beginning with The Gathering. She also made a cameo appearance in The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, Davison's project to celebrate Doctor Who's fiftieth anniversary in 2013. Fielding then reprised Tegan for the special-produced Season Nineteen Blu-ray trailer in 2018, followed by its Season Twenty counterpart in 2023. She made her fully-fledged Doctor Who return in 2022 with The Power Of The Doctor, which celebrated the BBC's centenary and saw the regeneration of Jodie Whittaker's Thirteenth Doctor. The following year, Fielding could be seen as Tegan again in an episode of Tales Of The TARDIS on BBC iPlayer, which featured an abridged version of Earthshock.

For many years, Fielding was actively involved as an administrator for charity projects, most notably Project MotorHouse which aimed to restore a derelict museum and theatre in Ramsgate, Kent, where she was resident. In 2012, Fielding revealed that she was battling cancer.