Zawe Ashton, who played the chaotic Violet 'Vod' Nordstrom in Channel 4's university sitcom Fresh Meat, is now engaged to actor Tom Hiddleston. The show, which premiered in 2011 and ran for four seasons, followed a group of students sharing an off-campus house in Manchester.
Career After Fresh Meat
Ashton had been acting since she was six, but her role as Vod introduced her to many viewers. In 2012, she was nominated as Most Promising Newcomer at the British Independent Film Awards for her role in Dreams of a Life, a documentary about Joyce Vincent, a London woman whose death went unnoticed for three years.
In 2015, she fronted a BBC documentary on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in the UK and abroad, which aired as part of Comic Relief. She has also appeared in films such as The Marvels (2023), Mr Malcolm's List (2022), and Velvet Buzzsaw (2019), for which she earned a Brit to Watch award at the 2020 Newport Beach Film Festival.
Writing and Engagement
In 2020, Ashton published a memoir titled Character Breakdown, which holds a four-star rating on Goodreads. She is engaged to Tom Hiddleston, known for playing Loki in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The pair met in 2018 while working on the play Betrayal, and they share two children, born in 2022 and late 2025.
All episodes of Fresh Meat are available to stream free via Channel 4's catch-up service.
