actresses with classical features
(young) modern day actresses who can play historical roles thanks to their classical looks
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Jessica Michelle Chastain was born in Sacramento, California, and was raised in a middle-class household in a Northern California suburb. Her mother, Jerri Chastain, is a vegan chef whose family is originally from Kansas, and her stepfather is a fireman. She discovered dance at the age of nine and was in a dance troupe by age thirteen. She began performing in Shakespearean productions all over the Bay area.
An actor in a production of "Romeo & Juliet" encouraged her to audition for Juilliard as a drama major. She became a member of "Crew 32" with the help of a scholarship from one of the school's famous alumni, Robin Williams.
In her last year at Juilliard, she was offered a holding deal with TV writer/producer John Wells and she eventually worked in three of his TV shows. Jessica continues to do theatre, having played in "The Cherry Orchard", "Rodney's Wife", "Salome" and "Othello". She spends her time between New York and Los Angeles, working in theater, film and TV.
In 2011, she had a prolific year in film. She was nominated for and won a number of awards, including a 2012 Oscar nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role for The Help (2011).- Actress
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Kate Bosworth was born in Los Angeles, California, to Patricia (Potter), a homemaker, and Harold Bosworth, who was an executive for Talbots. Unlike the characters Bosworth has portrayed in television and in film, which are known as "townies", Kate spent most of her childhood in different cities and states. At age 6, she and her parents moved to San Francisco, then to Connecticut at 9, and to Cohasset, Massachusetts, at 14. It was at 14 that Kate, a champion equestrian, learned of a casting call for a movie about horses.
Although Kate attended the open audition in New York for the Robert Redford film The Horse Whisperer (1998) simply in hopes of getting the experience of what it was like to audition for a movie role, she won the role of the female lead's best friend and the chance to work with director/star Robert Redford. Her previous acting experience had consisted of singing at county fairs in California and acting in a community theatre production of "Annie". However, since landing the movie role, Kate seemed to be in more sound stages than ranches. Fearful that an early career would rob her of her childhood, she took 18 months off to live a normal life before opting to plunge into acting again. In 2000, she landed the role of the bratty sister in the feature film The Newcomers (2000) and the part of a football co-captain's girlfriend in the Denzel Washington movie Remember the Titans (2000).
Throughout high school, Kate maintained academic excellence and was an honor roll student and a member of National Honor Society. In her spare time, she has volunteered with various non-profit organizations, including a Los Angeles program for physically challenged children who learn to ride horses with assistance.- Holliday Clark Grainger also credited as Holly Grainger, is an English screen and stage actress. Some of her prominent roles are Kate Beckett in the BAFTA award-winning children's series Roger and the Rottentrolls, Lucrezia Borgia in the Showtime series The Borgias, Robin Ellacott in Strike, DI Rachel Carey in the BBC One crime drama The Capture and Estella in Mike Newell's adaptation of Great Expectations.
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The actress and singer-songwriter Schuyler Fisk is the daughter of Academy Award-winning actress Sissy Spacek and production designer Jack Fisk, who met on the set of Badlands (1973), which starred Spacek (Fisk was the art director on the film). Although she was born in Los Angeles, California, she was raised in Virginia, where her parents established their home.
After acting in school plays, Fisk followed in the footsteps of her mother and became an actress. She is also a singer-songwriter, signed to Universal Records. Her song "Paperweight" was then featured on the soundtrack of the movie The Last Kiss (2006). Universal Records plans to release an album of her folk music in 2007.- Liv Lisa Fries (born 1990) is a German actress. In 2017, she gained an international following as the female lead Charlotte Ritter in the German TV series Babylon Berlin.
Born in Berlin, Fries wanted to become an actress when she was 14 years old after watching Léon: The Professional because she was impressed by Natalie Portman's performance. Her first role in Atomised (2005) (German: Elementarteilchen) was cut. Her debut occurred in 2006 with an episode of Schimanski, in which she played the female lead role.
Her performance in the German made-for-television film Sie hat es verdient as an aggressive, frustrated teenager named Linda who tortures one of her peers was praised by critics and audiences alike. Fries said that during filming, she started feeling lonely and isolated, just like her character.
In 2013, she starred in the German tragicomedy Zurich (original title Und morgen Mittag bin ich tot). She received wide critical acclaim for her performance as Lea, a young woman with cystic fibrosis. According to Fries, she prepared for the role by meeting with a patient with the disease, in addition to running up stairs while breathing through a straw.
Fries also plays a recurring role in the 2017 TV series Counterpart.
Fries studied abroad as an exchange student in Beijing. In addition to her native tongue German, she speaks English, French and Mandarin. After receiving her Abitur in 2010, she enrolled to study philosophy and literary science, but dropped out as her career as an actress progressed. - Irish actress Katie McGrath did not intend to make a career for herself in the acting profession. Upon graduating from Trinity College in Dublin she became interested in fashion journalism and worked for lifestyle and fashion magazine, Image. She left after a while, as it was not her calling. After this, her mother's best friend, an assistant director, helped get her a job as a wardrobe assistant on the series The Tudors (2007). Whilst working on the production some of the staff suggested she try acting. A cast driver on the series passed her a list with the actors' agents on it, so she wrote and sent photos to them, and was signed shortly after.
In television, she is best known for portraying Morgana on the BBC One series Merlin (2008-2012), Lucy Westenra on the British-American series Dracula (2013-2014), Sarah Bennett in the first season of the Canadian horror anthology series Slasher (2016) and for her role as Lena Luthor on the American superhero series Supergirl (2016). Her film roles include Lady Thelma Furness in the drama film W.E. (2011), Zara with one of the most iconic scenes in the whole franchise in the science fiction adventure film Jurassic World (2015) and Elsa in the epic fantasy film King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017).
McGrath was raised in Ashford, County Wicklow, Ireland, by Paul, who works with computers, and Mary, who works for an Irish designer. She has two older brothers, Sean, an online media manager, and Rory, who is a post-production producer. She studied the International Baccalaureate at St. Andrew's College before graduating from Trinity College, Dublin with a degree in history with a focus in Russian history.
McGrath was cast in Damage, an Irish TV-movie in 2007. She also starred in the play La Marea at the Dublin Theatre Festival in the same year. She appeared in the feature films Eden and Freakdog in 2008, before being cast as Morgana Pendragon in Merlin.
In 2009, McGrath starred in a five-part docudrama for Channel 4 exploring the life of Queen Elizabeth II, The Queen, in which she played a young Princess Margaret. Emilia Fox portrayed Elizabeth II in the same episode in which McGrath appeared; the two had previously worked together as sisters Morgause and Morgana in Merlin. In 2010, McGrath was cast in Madonna's directorial debut W.E., an Edward VIII biopic. McGrath played Lady Furness, the king's former mistress who introduces him to Wallis Simpson.
2011 saw McGrath film the comedy-drama A Princess for Christmas in Romania. In September 2011, McGrath lent her voice to the characters in the Irish animated short film Tríd an Stoirm (Through the Storm). Later that month, McGrath was cast as Oriane Congost in Labyrinth.
McGrath was reunited with her The Tudors co-star and friend Jonathan Rhys Meyers in NBC and Sky Living's horror drama TV series Dracula; she portrayed Lucy Westenra. In June 2013, McGrath co-starred in episode four of the Channel 4 show Dates as a young lesbian on the dating scene alongside Gemma Chan. In November 2014, McGrath co-starred in a Hozier music video for the song "From Eden".
In 2015, McGrath had a supporting role as Zara in the film Jurassic World and starred in the Crackle original spy-thriller, The Throwaways.
McGrath portrayed the lead role in the first season of Chiller's original horror series Slasher, which premiered on 4 March 2016.
In 2016, it was announced that McGrath would play the recurring role of Lena Luthor in the second season of Supergirl. She appeared in the season two premiere episode entitled "The Adventures of Supergirl" and was promoted to a series regular in March 2017 for the third season. She appeared as Elsa in Guy Ritchie's fantasy film King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, which was released in May 2017.
In 2016-2017 McGrath was featured in the first two seasons of Frontier, alongside Jason Momoa. In 2019 she starred in the Australian TV show Bridesmaids, alongside Georgina Haig and Abbie Cornish. In 2020 McGrath narrated the audio book for Islands of Mercy by Rose Tremain.
After wrapping up the sixth and final season of Supergirl in 2021, McGrath traveled to Budapest, where she shot the John Wick spin-off series The Continental. McGrath can be seen as The Adjudicator in The Continental, which aired its three episodes in 2023. - Actress
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Ask Kate Winslet what she likes about any of her characters, and the word "ballsy" is bound to pop up at least once. The British actress has made a point of eschewing straightforward pretty-girl parts in favor of more devilish damsels; as a result, she's built an eclectic resume that runs the gamut from Shakespearean tragedy to modern-day mysticism and erotica.
Kate Elizabeth Winslet was born in Reading, Berkshire, into a family of thespians -- parents Roger Winslet and Sally Anne Bridges-Winslet were both stage actors, maternal grandparents Oliver and Linda Bridges ran the Reading Repertory Theatre, and uncle Robert Bridges was a fixture in London's West End theatre district. Kate came into her talent at an early age. She scored her first professional gig at eleven, dancing opposite the Honey Monster in a commercial for a kids' cereal. She started acting lessons around the same time, which led to formal training at a performing arts high school. Over the next few years, she appeared on stage regularly and landed a few bit parts in sitcoms. Her first big break came at age 17, when she was cast as an obsessive adolescent in Heavenly Creatures (1994). The film, based on the true story of two fantasy-gripped girls who commit a brutal murder, received modest distribution but was roundly praised by critics.
Still a relative unknown, Winslet attended a cattle call audition the next year for Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility (1995). She made an immediate impression on the film's star, Emma Thompson, and beat out more than a hundred other hopefuls for the part of plucky Marianne Dashwood. Her efforts were rewarded with both a British Academy Award and an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Winslet followed up with two more period pieces, playing the rebellious heroine in Jude (1996) and Ophelia in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996).
The role that transformed Winslet from art house attraction to international star was Rose DeWitt Bukater, the passionate, rosy-cheeked aristocrat in James Cameron's Titanic (1997). Young girls the world over both idolized and identified with Winslet, swooning over all that face time opposite heartthrob Leonardo DiCaprio and noting her refreshingly healthy, unemaciated physique. Winslet's performance also garnered a Best Actress nomination, making her the youngest actress to ever receive two Academy Award nominations.
After the swell of unexpected attention surrounding Titanic (1997), Winslet was eager to retreat into independent projects. Rumor has it that she turned down the lead roles in both Shakespeare in Love (1998) and Anna and the King (1999) in order to play adventurous soul searchers in Hideous Kinky (1998) and Holy Smoke (1999). The former cast her as a young single mother traveling through 1970s Morocco with her daughters in tow; the latter, as a zealous follower of a guru tricked into a "deprogramming" session in the Australian outback. The next year found her back in period dress as the Marquis de Sade's chambermaid and accomplice in Quills (2000). Kate holds the distinction of being the youngest actor ever honored with four Academy Award nominations (she received her fourth at age 29). As of 2016, she has been nominated for an Oscar seven times, winning one of them: she received the Best Actress Oscar for the drama The Reader (2008), playing a former concentration camp guard.
For her performance of Joanna Hoffman in Steve Jobs (2015), she received her seventh Academy Award nomination.
Off camera, Winslet is known for her mischievous pranks and familial devotion. She has two sisters, Anna Winslet and Beth Winslet (both actresses), and a brother, Joss.
In 1998, she married assistant director Jim Threapleton. They had a daughter, Mia Honey Threapleton, in October 2000. They divorced in 2001. She later married director Sam Mendes in 2003 and gave birth to their son, Joe Alfie Winslet-Mendes, later that year. After seven years of marriage, in February 2010 they announced that they had amicably separated, and divorced in October 2010. In 2012, Kate married Ned Rocknroll, with whom she has a son. She was awarded Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in the 2012 Queen's Birthday Honours List for her services to Drama.- Actress
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Cate Blanchett was born on May 14, 1969 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, to June (Gamble), an Australian teacher and property developer, and Robert DeWitt Blanchett, Jr., an American advertising executive, originally from Texas. She has an older brother and a younger sister. When she was ten years old, her 40-year-old father died of a sudden heart attack. Her mother never remarried, and her grandmother moved in to help her mother.
Cate graduated from Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1992 and, in a little over a year, had won both critical and popular acclaim. On graduating from NIDA, she joined the Sydney Theatre Company's production of Caryl Churchill's "Top Girls", then played Felice Bauer, the bride, in Tim Daly's "Kafka Dances", winning the 1993 Newcomer Award from the Sydney Theatre Critics Circle for her performance. From there, Blanchett moved to the role of Carol in David Mamet's searing polemic "Oleanna", also for the Sydney Theatre Company, and won the Rosemont Best Actress Award, her second award that year. She then co-starred in the ABC Television's prime time drama Heartland (1994), again winning critical acclaim. In 1995, she was nominated for Best Female Performance for her role as Ophelia in the Belvoir Street Theatre Company's production of "Hamlet". Other theatre credits include Helen in the Sydney Theatre Company's "Sweet Phoebe", Miranda in "The Tempest" and Rose in "The Blind Giant is Dancing", both for the Belvoir Street Theatre Company. In other television roles, Blanchett starred as Bianca in ABC's Bordertown (1995), as Janie Morris in G.P. (1989) and in ABC's popular series Police Rescue (1994). She made her feature film debut in Paradise Road (1997).
Cate married writer Andrew Upton in 1997. She had met him a year earlier on a movie set, and they didn't like each other at first. He thought she was aloof, and she thought he was arrogant, but then they connected over a poker game at a party, and she went home with him that night. Three weeks later he proposed marriage and they quickly married before she went off to England to play her breakthrough role in films: the title character in Elizabeth (1998) for which she won numerous awards for her performance, including the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama. Cate was also nominated for an Academy Award for the role but lost out to Gwyneth Paltrow. 2001 was a particularly busy year, with starring roles in Bandits (2001), The Shipping News (2001), Charlotte Gray (2001) and playing Elf Queen Galadriel in the "Lord Of The Rings" trilogy. She also gave birth to her first child, son Dashiell, in 2001. In 2004, she gave birth to her second son Roman.
Also, in 2004, she played actress Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese's film The Aviator (2004), for which she received an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress. Two years later, she received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress for playing a teacher having an affair with an underage student in Notes on a Scandal (2006). In 2007, she returned to the role that made her a star in Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007). It earned her an Oscar nomination as Best Actress. She was nominated for another Oscar that same year as Best Supporting Actress for playing Bob Dylan in I'm Not There (2007). In 2008, she gave birth to her third child, son Ignatius. She and her husband became artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company, choosing to spend more time in Australia raising their three sons. She also purchased a multi-million dollar home in Sydney, Australia and named it Bulwarra and made extensive renovations to it. Because of her life in Australia, her film work became sporadic, until Woody Allen cast her in the title role in Blue Jasmine (2013), which won her the Academy Award as Best Actress. She ended her job as artistic director of the Sydney Theatre Company, while her husband continued there for two more years before he too resigned.
In 2015, she adopted her daughter Edith in her father's homeland of the United States. That same year, she and her husband sold their multi-million dollar home in Australia at a profit and moved to America. Reasons varied from her wanting to work more in America to wanting to familiarize herself with her late father's American heritage. She played the title role of Carol (2015), a 1950s American housewife in a lesbian affair with a younger woman, for which she received an Oscar nomination as Best Actress. While most actresses might slow down in their forties, Blanchett did the opposite by stretching her boundaries even further, such as when she played 13 different characters in Manifesto (2015) and then making her Broadway debut in 2017 in "The Present", which is her husband's adaptation of Chekhov's play "Platonov" for which she earned a Tony nomination as Best Actress in a Play. Also in 2017, she was selected for the highest honor in her birth country: the Companion of the Order of Australia (AC).- Actress
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Mary Elle Fanning was born on the 9th of April 1998 in Conyers, Georgia, USA, to Heather Joy (Arrington) and Steven J. Fanning. Her mother played professional tennis, and her father, now an electronics salesman, played minor league baseball. She is of German, Irish, English, French, and Channel Islander descent.
Elle's ascent into stardom began when she was almost three years old, when she played the younger version of her sister, Dakota Fanning's, character Lucy in the drama film I Am Sam (2001). She then played younger Dakota again in Taken (2002) as Allie, age 3. But her first big independent movie without her sister was in 2003's Daddy Day Care (2003) as Jamie. She then had two guest appearances on Judging Amy (1999) and CSI: Miami (2002).
Elle was becoming more successful and she got another role, in 2004's The Door in the Floor (2004) with Kim Basinger. Her career kept improving, as she had two movies in 2005, Because of Winn-Dixie (2005) and I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With (2006).
She has since starred in a number of prominent films, including The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), Super 8 (2011), We Bought a Zoo (2011), and Maleficent (2014).- Actress
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Rachel Brosnahan was born in in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1990 and is an American actress. She is best known for her role as 'Midge' Maisel in the Amazon Prime Video series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017) for which she has won two Golden Globes for Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Musical or Comedy (2019, 2018), one Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series (2018), and one Critics' Choice Award for Best Actress in a Comedy Series (2018).
She is also known for her previous roles in the film Beautiful Creatures (2013) as Genevieve Duchannes, in the Netflix original series House of Cards (2013) as Rachel Posner, and in the TV series Manhattan (2014) as Abby Isaacs.
Rachel is the daughter of Carol (Best) and Earl Brosnahan, who worked in children's publishing. Her mother is English. Her father is an American, of mostly Irish descent. From the age of four, she was raised in Highland Park, Illinois. She has a younger brother and sister. Rachel is the niece of the late handbag designer Kate Spade, who was her father's sister.
She attended Wayne Thomas Elementary School, and then Northwood Junior High School. She performed in musical theater during junior high school and high school. At Highland Park High School, she was on the wrestling team for two years and was a snowboarding instructor. When Brosnahan was 16, she took a class with Carole Dibo, the director of Wilmette's Actors' Training Center, and now Brosnahan's manager. She graduated in 2008, and graduated from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 2012.
Brosnahan was cast in her first movie role as Lisa in the Michael Bay-produced horror movie The Unborn (2009) while she was still in high school. During college, she performed in single episodes of TV series such as Gossip Girl (2007), The Good Wife (2009), Grey's Anatomy (2005), and In Treatment (2008). After college, she began landing recurring roles in series such as The Blacklist (2013), the short-lived Black Box (2014)), and "House of Cards" (2013-15), which brought her career prominence that included an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series in 2015. Initially booked for two episodes and five lines, she caught Beau Willimon's eye; soon, she was developed into a major character. She also played Abby Isaacs for two seasons on the TV drama series "Manhattan."
She first appeared on stage in 2009 in "Up" at the Steppenwolf Theater, which was followed by her Broadway debut in "The Big Knife" with the Roundabout Theater Company in 2013. In 2016 she played Desdemona in "Othello" at New York Theater Workshop opposite David Oyelowo and Daniel Craig.
She was cast as the lead role and title character of the Amazon Video series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017), which premiered in 2017. Her performance earned her a Golden Globe and a Critics' Choice award for Best Actress in a Television Series--Musical or Comedy.- Actress
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Cristiana Capotondi was born on 13 September 1980 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. She is an actress and director, known for The Worst Week of My Life (2011), Come tu mi vuoi (2007) and Notte prima degli esami (2006).- Actress
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Michelle Suzanne Dockery (born 15 December 1981) is an English actress and singer. She is best known for her role as Lady Mary Crawley in the ITV drama series Downton Abbey (2010-2015), for which she has been nominated for three consecutive Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe Award. She made her professional stage debut in His Dark Materials in 2004. For her role as Eliza Doolittle in the 2007 London revival of Pygmalion, she was nominated for the Evening Standard Award.- Actress
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Amy Abigail Nuttall is an English actress and singer known for playing Chloe Atkinson in the ITV soap opera Emmerdale from 2000 until 2005, and housemaid Ethel Parks in ITV period drama Downton Abbey. Nuttall was born in Blackburn, Lancashire. She was educated at Bury Grammar School for Girls and trained at Tring Park School for the Performing Arts. She performed with the National Youth Music Theatre, notably playing the lead role of Princess Ismene in Aurelius at the Tyne Opera House, Newcastle and the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh in August 1997.- Actress
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Lesley Manville was born on March 12, 1956 in Brighton, East Sussex, England. She is a multi award-winning actress of theatre, film, and television, and has worked extensively with director Mike Leigh. She is known for Another Year (2010), All or Nothing (2002), Topsy-Turvy (1999) and Secrets & Lies (1996), and her performance in Phantom Thread (2017), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She also had a supporting role in the Disney fantasy Maleficent (2014). Manville's extensive stage career includes roles in "As You Like It", "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" and "The Alchemist". Her film debut was in Dance with a Stranger (1985). She was awarded Officer of the Order of the British Empire at the 2015 Queen's Birthday Honours for her services to drama. She was awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire at the 2021 Queen's New Years Honours for her services to drama and to charity.- Actress
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Shining equally bright in both comedic and dramatic roles, Courtney Ford's ability to take on diverse projects has set her career in motion. After a memorable arc on Showtime's Dexter, Ford was named one of the "Top Ten Faces to Watch on Television" by Variety. She was most recently a series regular on one of The CW's most unique shows, Legends of Tomorrow, playing fan favorite Nora Darhk.
Ford has showcased her versatility with guest starring performances on hit shows such as Grey's Anatomy (2005), Criminal Minds (2005), CSI: NY (2004), The Big Bang Theory (2007), Hawaii Five-0 (2010) , and How I Met Your Mother (2005). Her episode of, The Naked Man (2008), received an Emmy Award Nomination. Her season long recurring guest star on Showtime's hit Dexter (2006) as John Lithgow's troubled daughter earned her rave reviews and loyal fan following. On season four of the HBO series True Blood (2008), Ford played Portia Bellefleur, a successful attorney who becomes romantically involved with vampire Bill Compton. In one of the season's most shocking twists, Bill discovers that his lover Portia is actually his great-great-great-great granddaughter, a revelation that stuns them both, as well as the fan community at large.
A formally trained actress, Ford has received training in The Strasberg Method, The Improv Underground and has studied with Andrew Magarian and Lesly Kahn. Courtney Ford is a native of Los Angeles and currently resides there with her husband, Brandon Routh, where they both passionately support and serve as activists for "Service Nation".- Antonia was born in England but was raised in Virginia, USA till she was 12. She then lived in Wiltshire. She played leads in National Youth Music Theatre as a child and did Footlights when she studied English at Cambridge University. She left university to go to Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. She is known for films such as St Trinians and the CBS mini series Elvis in which she played Priscilla Presley. She took time out of acting to study psychology at university.
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Patricia Hodge was born on 29 September 1946 in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, England, UK. She is an actress and writer, known for The Elephant Man (1980), Miranda (2009) and The Falklands Play (2002). She was previously married to Peter Douglas Owen.- Caterina Murino was born on September 15, 1977, in Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy. In 1996 she took fourth place in the Miss Italy contest. Then she moved to Milan, where she began working as a model in commercials for MasterCard, Swatch, Mercedes-Benz and Nescafe, among other gigs. From 1999-2000 she studied acting at the Scuola di Cinema e Teatro di Francesca de Sapio in Italy.
In 1999 she made her acting debut in a stage production of "Richard III" and appeared in several Italian-language plays. In 2002 she began her film and television career with bit parts in Italian, German and French productions. Her breakthrough came in 2004, when she co-starred opposite Jean Reno in the French comedy The Corsican File (2004).
She is trilingual, speaking French, English and Italian. She is a versatile actress and a good athlete. Her talents include singing, dancing tango, flamenco and oriental dances, as well as horseback riding. She co-starred as Solange, one of three Bond girls, opposite Daniel Craig in Casino Royale (2006). - Ekaterina Panasyuk was born on 12 January 1996 in Russia. She is an actress, known for Kupchino (2018), Praktikant (2019) and Baggage (2015).
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Susanne Wuest grew up close to Vienna, Austria. Right after high school she started working at the prestigious Volkstheater in Vienna. Soon after, she gained international attention with her leading part in "Antares", directed by Götz Spielmann.
After it premiered in competition of Locarno, "Antares" went on to become Austria's submission for Best Foreign Language Academy Award in 2005, as did another film she starred in, in 2015: "Goodnight Mommy" premiered at the Venice Film Festival, won multiple awards and even went on to become a success with US audiences.
Some of the acclaimed directors she has worked with are Klaus Maria Brandauer, Olivier Assayas, Gore Verbinski, Christoph Schrewe, Jessica Hausner, Barbara Albert and very recently, Laszlo Nemes.
Of her fearless and extraordinary portrayals of women, the trade press writes: "You can easily imagine Susanne Wuest as the younger sister of Tilda Swinton: like her, she seems to have no reservations, but rather to have the courage to set tasks for herself that are always new, at times difficult to take on, certainly hard to calculate. What emerges, is, at any rate, exceptional and challenging." (Filmdienst)- Actress
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Ella Hunt is an English actress and musician, know for her roles in Dickinson (2019-2021) and Anna and The Apocalypse (2018). Ella most recently wrapped on Kevin Costner's upcoming feature saga Horizon: An American Saga, opposite Kevin Costner, Sienna Miller and Sam Worthington. Recent feature credits include Mariama Diallo's Master with Regina Hall for Amazon Studios and 3000 Pictures' Lady Chatterley's Lover, directed by Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre.
In 2022, Ella made her stage debut in the role of 'Alice' in Clare Lizzimore's production of Patrick Marber's Closer at the Lyric Hammersmith to celebrate the play's 25th Anniversary for which she garnered rave reviews.
Ella also starred in Apple's critically-acclaimed Dickinson opposite Hailee Steinfeld, Mike Bullen's award-winning comedic-drama Cold Feet, as well as in Joe Cross' feature debut Summer Night. She was nominated for a Scottish BAFTA for her role in Blazing Griffin's and Parkhouse Pictures zombie-musical, Anna and The Apocalypse.
Previously, Ella has been seen opposite Ben Kingsley and Gillian Anderson in Jon Wright's feature Robot Overlords, starred in the feature Kat And The Band, and also had roles in the Clive Owen horror Intruders and the film adaptation of Les Miserables.
Ella has a brilliant music career that she balances with her acting.- Actress
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She began acting in 2002, when film director Manuel Martin Cuenca chose her from 3000 girls to be the lead actress in his film "The Bolshevik's Weakness." One year later, Maria's work impressed both the audience and the Spanish Film Academy, who awarded her with the Goya for Best Newcomer. Since then she has been working in Spain, Italy, UK, US, Mexico, Venezuela...- Actress
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Keira Christina Knightley was born March 26, 1985 in the South West Greater London suburb of Richmond. She is the daughter of actor Will Knightley and actress turned playwright Sharman Macdonald. An older brother, Caleb Knightley, was born in 1979. Her father is English, while her Scottish-born mother is of Scottish and Welsh origin. Brought up immersed in the acting profession from both sides - writing and performing - it is little wonder that the young Keira asked for her own agent at the age of three. She was granted one at the age of six and performed in her first TV role as "Little Girl" in Royal Celebration (1993), aged seven.
It was discovered at an early age that Keira had severe difficulties in reading and writing. She was not officially dyslexic as she never sat the formal tests required of the British Dyslexia Association. Instead, she worked incredibly hard, encouraged by her family, until the problem had been overcome by her early teens. Her first multi-scene performance came in A Village Affair (1995), an adaptation of the lesbian love story by Joanna Trollope. This was followed by small parts in the British crime series The Bill (1984), an exiled German princess in The Treasure Seekers (1996) and a much more substantial role as the young "Judith Dunbar" in Giles Foster's adaptation of Rosamunde Pilcher's novel Coming Home (1998), alongside Peter O'Toole, Penelope Keith and Joanna Lumley. The first time Keira's name was mentioned around the world was when it was revealed (in a plot twist kept secret by director George Lucas) that she played Natalie Portman's decoy "Padme" to Portman's "Amidala" in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999). It was several years before agreement was reached over which scenes featured Keira as the queen and which featured Natalie!
Keira had no formal training as an actress and did it out of pure enjoyment. She went to an ordinary council-run school in nearby Teddington and had no idea what she wanted to do when she left. By now, she was beginning to receive far more substantial roles and was starting to turn work down as one project and her schoolwork was enough to contend with. She reappeared on British television in 1999 as "Rose Fleming" in Alan Bleasdale's faithful reworking of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist (1999), and traveled to Romania to film her first title role in Walt Disney's Princess of Thieves (2001) in which she played Robin Hood's daughter, Gwyn. Keira's first serious boyfriend was her Princess of Thieves (2001) co-star Del Synnott, and they later co-starred in Peter Hewitt's 'work of fart' Thunderpants (2002). Nick Hamm's dark thriller The Hole (2001) kept her busy during 2000, and featured her first nude scene (15 at the time, the film was not released until she was 16 years old). In the summer of 2001, while Keira studied and sat her final school exams (she received six A's), she filmed a movie about an Asian girl's (Parminder Nagra) love for football and the prejudices she has to overcome regarding both her culture and her religion). Bend It Like Beckham (2002) was a smash hit in football-mad Britain but it had to wait until another of Keira's films propelled it to the top end of the US box office. Bend It Like Beckham (2002) cost just £3.5m to make, and nearly £1m of that came from the British Lottery. It took £11m in the UK and has since gone on to score more than US$76m worldwide.
Meanwhile, Keira had started A-levels at Esher College, studying Classics, English Literature and Political History, but continued to take acting roles which she thought would widen her experience as an actress. The story of a drug-addicted waitress and her friendship with the young son of a drug-addict, Pure (2002), occupied Keira from January to March 2002. Also at this time, Keira's first attempt at Shakespeare was filmed. She played "Helena" in a modern interpretation of a scene from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" entitled The Seasons Alter (2002). This was commissioned by the environmental organization "Futerra", of which Keira's mother is patron. Keira received no fee for this performance or for another short film, New Year's Eve (2002), by award-winning director Col Spector. But it was a chance encounter with producer Andy Harries at the London premiere of Bridget Jones's Diary (2001) which forced Keira to leave her studies and pursue acting full-time. The meeting lead to an audition for the role of "Larisa Feodorovna Guishar" - the classic heroine of Boris Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago (2002), played famously in the David Lean movie by Julie Christie. This was to be a big-budget TV movie with a screenplay written by Andrew Davies. Keira won the part and the mini-series was filmed throughout the Spring of 2002 in Slovakia, co-starring Sam Neill and Hans Matheson as "Yuri Zhivago". Keira rounded off 2002 with a few scenes in the first movie to be directed by Blackadder and Vicar of Dibley writer Richard Curtis. Called Love Actually (2003), Keira played "Juliet", a newlywed whose husband's Best Man is secretly besotted with her. A movie filmed after Love Actually (2003) but released before it was to make the world sit up and take notice of this beautiful fresh-faced young actress with a cute British accent. It was a movie which Keira very nearly missed out on, altogether. Auditions were held in London for a new blockbuster movie called Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), but heavy traffic in the city forced Keira to be tagged on to the end of the day's auditions list. It helped - she got the part. Filming took place in Los Angeles and the Caribbean from October 2002 to March 2003 and was released to massive box office success and almost universal acclaim in the July of that year.
Meanwhile, a small British film called Bend It Like Beckham (2002) had sneaked onto a North American release slate and was hardly setting the box office alight. But Keira's dominance in "Pirates" had set tongues wagging and questions being asked about the actress playing "Elizabeth Swann". Almost too late, "Bend It"'s distributors realized one of its two stars was the same girl whose name was on everyone's lips due to "Pirates", and took the unusual step of re-releasing "Bend It" to 1,000 screens across the US, catapulting it from no. 26 back up to no. 12. "Pirates", meanwhile, was fighting off all contenders at the top spot, and stayed in the Top 3 for an incredible 21 weeks. It was perhaps no surprise, then, that Keira was on producer Jerry Bruckheimer's wanted list for the part of "Guinevere" in a planned accurate telling of the legend of "King Arthur". Filming took place in Ireland and Wales from June to November 2003. In July, Keira had become the celebrity face of British jeweller and luxury goods retailer, Asprey. At a photoshoot for the company on Long Island New York in August, Keira met and fell in love with Northern Irish model Jamie Dornan. King Arthur (2004) was released in July 2004 to lukewarm reviews. It seems audiences wanted the legend after all, and not necessarily the truth. Keira became the breakout star and 'one to watch in 2004' throughout the world's media at the end of 2003.
Keira's 2004 started off in Scotland and Canada filming John Maybury's time-travelling thriller The Jacket (2005) with Oscar-winner Adrien Brody. A planned movie of Deborah Moggach's novel, "Tulip Fever", about forbidden love in 17th Century Amsterdam, was canceled in February after the British government suddenly closed tax loopholes which allowed filmmakers to claw back a large proportion of their expenditure. Due to star Keira and Jude Law in the main roles, the film remains mothballed. Instead, Keira spent her time wisely, visiting Ethiopia on behalf of the "Comic Relief" charity, and spending summer at various grandiose locations around the UK filming what promises to be a faithful adaptation of Jane Austen's classic novel Pride & Prejudice (2005), alongside Matthew Macfadyen as "Mr. Darcy", and with Donald Sutherland and Judi Dench in supporting roles. In October 2004, Keira received her first major accolade, the Hollywood Film Award for Best Breakthrough Actor - Female, and readers of Empire Magazine voted her the Sexiet Movie Star Ever. The remainder of 2004 saw Keira once again trying a completely new genre, this time the part-fact, part-fiction life story of model turned bounty hunter Domino (2005). 2005 started with the premiere of The Jacket (2005) at the Sundance Film Festival, with the US premiere in LA on February 28th. Much of the year was then spent in the Caribbean filming both sequels to Pirates Of The Caribbean. Keira's first major presenting role came in a late-night bed-in comedy clip show for Comic Relief with presenter Johnny Vaughan. In late July, promotions started for the September release of Pride & Prejudice (2005), with British fans annoyed to learn that the US version would end with a post-marriage kiss, but the European version would not. Nevertheless, when the movie opened in September on both sides of the Atlantic, Keira received her greatest praise thus far in her career, amid much talk of awards. It spent three weeks at No. 1 in the UK box office.
Domino (2005) opened well in October, overshadowed by the death of Domino Harvey earlier in the year. Keira received Variety's Personality Of The Year Award in November, topped the following month by her first Golden Globe nomination, for Pride & Prejudice (2005). KeiraWeb.com exclusively announced that Keira would play Helene Joncour in an adaptation of Alessandro Baricco's novella Silk (2007). Pride & Prejudice (2005) garnered six BAFTA nominations at the start of 2006, but not Best Actress for Keira, a fact which paled soon after by the announcement she had received her first Academy Award nomination, the third youngest Best Actress Oscar hopeful. A controversial nude Vanity Fair cover of Keira and Scarlett Johansson kept the press busy up till the Oscars, with Reese Witherspoon taking home the gold man in the Best Actress category, although Keira's Vera Wang dress got more media attention. Keira spent early summer in Europe filming Silk (2007) opposite Michael Pitt, and the rest of the summer in the UK filming Atonement (2007), in which she plays Cecilia Tallis, and promoting the new Pirates movie (her Ellen Degeneres interview became one of the year's Top 10 'viral downloads'). Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) broke many box office records when it opens worldwide in July, becoming the third biggest movie ever by early September. Keira sued British newspaper The Daily Mail in early 2007 after her image in a bikini accompanied an article about a woman who blamed slim celebrities for the death of her daughter from anorexia. The case was settled and Keira matched the settlement damages and donated the total amount to an eating disorder charity. Keira filmed a movie about the life of Dylan Thomas, The Edge Of Love (2008) with a screenplay written by her mother Sharman Macdonald. Her co-star Lindsay Lohan pulled out just a week before filming began, and was replaced by Sienna Miller.
What was announced to be Keira's final Pirates movie in the franchise, Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End (2007), opened strongly in June, rising to all-time fifth biggest movie by July. Atonement (2007) opened the Venice Film Festival in August, and opened worldwide in September, again to superb reviews for Keira. Meanwhile, Silk (2007) opened in September on very few screens and disappeared without a trace. Keira spent the rest of the year filming The Duchess (2008), the life story of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, based on Amanda Foreman's award-winning biography of the distant relation of Princess Diana. The year saw more accolades and poll-topping for Keira than ever before, including Women's Beauty Icon 2007 and gracing the covers of all the top-selling magazines. She won Best Actress for Atonement (2007) at the Variety Club Of Great Britain Showbiz Awards, and ended the year with her second Golden Globe nomination. Christmas Day saw - or rather heard - Keira on British TV screens in a new Robbie The Reindeer animated adventure, with DVD proceeds going to Comic Relief. At the start of 2008, Keira received her first BAFTA nomination - Best Actress for Atonement, and the movie wins Best Film: Drama at the Golden Globes. Seven Academy Award nominations for Atonement soon follow. Keira wins Best Actress for her role as Cecilia Tallis at the Empire Film Awards. In May, Keira's first Shakespearean role is announced, when she is confirmed to play Cordelia in a big-screen version of King Lear, alongside Naomi Watts and Gwyneth Paltrow, with Sir Anthony Hopkins as the titular monarch. After two years of rumours, it is confirmed that Keira is on the shortlist to play Eliza Doolittle in a new adaptation of My Fair Lady. The Edge Of Love opens the Edinburgh Film Festival on June 18th, and opens on limited release in the UK and US. A huge round of promotions for The Duchess occurs throughout the summer, with cast and crew trying to play down the marketers' decision to draw parallels between the duchess and Princess Diana. Keira attends the UK and US premieres and Toronto Film Festival within the first week of September. The Duchess opens strongly on both sides of the Atlantic. Two more movies were confirmed for Keira during September - a tale of adultery called Last Night (2010), and a biopic of author F Scott Fitzgerald entitled The Beautiful and the Damned.
Keira spent October on the streets of New York City filming Last Night alongside Sam Worthington and Guillaume Canet. Keira helped to promote the sixtieth anniversary of the UN's Declaration of Human Rights, by contributing to a series of short films produced to mark the occasion. In January 2009 it was announced Keira had signed to play a reclusive actress in an adaptation of Ken Bruen's novel London Boulevard (2010), co-starring Colin Farrell. Keira continues her close ties with the Comic Relief charity by helping to launch their British icons T-shirts campaign. In the same week King Lear was revealed to have been shelved, it was announced that Keira would instead star alongside her Pride & Prejudice co-star Carey Mulligan in an adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Never Let Me Go (2010). A new short film emerges in March, recorded in the January of 2008 in which Keira plays a Fairy! The Continuing and Lamentable Saga of the Suicide Brothers (2009) was written by Keira's boyfriend Rupert Friend and actor Tom Mison. It went to be shown at the London Film Festival in October and won Best Comedy Short at the New Hampshire Film Festival. Keira continued to put her celebrity to good use in 2009 with a TV commercial for WomensAid highlighting domestic abuse against women. Unfortunately, UK censors refused to allow its broadcast and it can only be viewed on YouTube. May and June saw Keira filming Never Let Me Go (2010) and London Boulevard (2010) back-to-back. In October, a new direction for Keira's career emerged, when it was announced she would appear on the London stage in her West End debut role as Jennifer, in a reworking of Moliere's The Misanthrope, starring Damian Lewis and Tara Fitzgerald. More than $2m of ticket sales followed in the first four days, before even rehearsals had begun! The play ran from December to March at London's Comedy Theatre.- Hailing from Melbourne, Australia, Bella Heathcote has emerged as one of Hollywood's most sought after talents. She can most recently be seen in 'Relic' starring alongside Emily Mortimer, which received rave reviews at its premiere at Sundance 2020. Prior to that, Bella starred in CBS All Access drama series 'Strange Angel' with Jack Reynor and Rupert Friend as well as a major role on Amazon's acclaimed original drama series 'The Man In The High Castle.'
Heathcote will next begin filming Netflix original series 'Pieces of Her' alongside Toni Collette. Set in a sleepy Georgia town where a random act of violence sets off an unexpected chain of events for 30-year-old Andy Oliver (Heathcote) and her mother (Collette). Desperate for answers, Andy embarks on a dangerous journey across America, drawing her towards the dark, hidden heart of her family.