She attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art in the 1980s, before taking small roles in theatre and on television.

[1] Her parents, businessman Michael and health visitor Helen Norris (née Latham), divorced when she was four years old.

[2] Norris made her professional stage debut in a 1989 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, which earned her her Equity card.

She made her television debut in the 1991 BBC serial The Men's Room, playing the daughter of Bill Nighy's character.

After being out of work for four months in 1996, Norris considered quitting acting and studying for a degree in law, intending to become a solicitor.

[5] During the six years Cold Feet ran, Norris appeared in a leading role in the BBC drama Berkeley Square, Killing Time: The Millennium Poem, starring opposite Christopher Eccleston, and the 2002 television film Falling Apart, playing a woman in a violent relationship.

Further film roles include an appearance in an adaptation of Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim, and in David Kane's Born Romantic.

[11] In 2010, she was cast in the television science fiction drama Outcasts as Stella Isen, the head of security on an extraterrestrial human colony.

From November 2010, Norris played Ruth Condomine in a national tour of Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit.

Later that year, she was announced as the starring cast member of Seven Network's Between Two Worlds, created by Bevan Lee and directed by Kriv Stenders.