Amy O'Donnell was born in the early 1980s, and her formative years were spent in the Scottish town of Motherwell, where she was raised alongside her two older sisters.
Initially, O'Donnell pursued a university education in international law, but she abandoned her studies after only three months to pursue a career in acting.
In the early stages of her acting career, O'Donnell primarily focused on theatrical productions, featuring in notable plays such as Boys, The Hard Man, Eigengrau, and Yerma.
O'Donnell also made appearances in various BBC television productions, including Feel the Force in 2006 and Holby City in 2012, where she played minor roles.
One of her most notable roles was in the play My Romantic History at the Edinburgh Fringe, which won the prestigious Fringe First award in 2011. She played the lead role in this production.
From 2014 to the present, O'Donnell has enjoyed a recurring role as Alison McIntosh in the Scottish television crime drama Shetland, produced by ITV Studios for the BBC.
In addition to her television work, O'Donnell was part of the cast of the BBC Radio 4 play Synonymous, written by D C Jackson, in 2017.
In her personal life, O'Donnell is in a long-term relationship with Scottish playwright D C Jackson, with whom she has two children: a daughter born in late 2017 and a son born in late 2020. The couple met while O'Donnell was starring in Jackson's play My Romantic History at the Traverse in Edinburgh, although they did not begin dating until later.
