Donohoe was born in London, the daughter of Joanna and Ted Donohoe, antique dealers. Her father (who also worked for the foreign office), is of Irish/Russian descent and her mother is Swiss. She left home at sixteen, and in her early twenties she was accepted at the Central School of Speech and Drama. In the late 1980s she decided to move to Los Angeles to expand her career.

Donohoe first came to attention of the worldwide audience in 1986 when she was cast opposite Oliver Reed as Lucy Irvine in Nicolas Roeg's Castaway (where she appeared nude in some sequences of the movie). She followed this up with roles in two Ken Russell films The Lair of the White Worm, based on a Bram Stoker novel, and The Rainbow, based on a D. H. Lawrence novel. In 1981, Amanda appeared in Read more...

Donohoe is a feminist, a socialist and an atheist. Donohoe admits to having experimented with drugs but never became addicted. She dated Adam Ant in the early 1980s and punched an obsessed fan who threatened Ant with a knife and she lived with film maker Nick Broomfield for three years. She has been open about being bisexual telling Diva magazine "My first sexual experiences were with women and Read more...