Jessica Brown Findlay

1.1. Childhood and Family Background

Jessica Rose Brown Findlay was born on September 14, 1987, in Cookham, Berkshire, England. She grew up in Cookham, a place she described as "very familiar and incredibly dear to my heart," noting its quiet charm. Her father worked as a financial adviser, and her mother was a teaching assistant.

1.2. Ballet Career and Injury

Brown Findlay began her artistic training in ballet at a young age. She trained extensively with the National Youth Ballet and the Associates of the Royal Ballet. By the age of 15, her talent was recognized when she was invited to dance with the Kirov at the Royal Opera House in London for a summer season.

She attended Furze Platt Senior School in Maidenhead. After completing her GCSEs, she received offers from several ballet schools. However, she chose to attend the Arts Educational School due to the A-level courses it offered and its pastoral care system. During her second year at the school, she underwent three operations on her ankles. Unfortunately, the last operation was unsuccessful, preventing her from continuing her career as a dancer. Reflecting on this period, she stated, "Growing up, I was completely in love and infatuated with ballet. Ballet was my life completely."

1.3. Transition to Acting

Following the end of her ballet career, Brown Findlay was encouraged by an art teacher to pursue other creative avenues. She completed her education at Arts Educational School, Tring Park, before enrolling in a fine art course at Central Saint Martin's College of Art and Design in London. It was during her time at university in London that she discovered her passion for acting, realizing that "acting was the element from ballet that I actually loved and missed the most." This pivotal shift marked the beginning of her professional acting journey.

2.1. Early Roles and Breakthrough

Brown Findlay's early acting career included a role as a girl in bed in the 2009 short film Man on a Motorcycle. Her first significant role was in the 2011 British coming-of-age comedy drama film Albatross, where she played the lead character, 17-year-old Emelia Conan Doyle. Directed by Niall MacCormick, the film also starred Julia Ormond, Felicity Jones, and Sebastian Koch. Its premise involved a teenage aspiring writer who enters the lives of a dysfunctional family residing on the south coast of England, portraying bookish young women encountering a peer without boundaries. She then appeared in two episodes of the British science fiction comedy-drama television series Misfits, notably in the first-season finale as Rachel, a wholesome religious girl whose superpower compels others to abandon their delinquent behavior for celibacy.

Almost immediately after her work on Albatross, Brown Findlay was cast in the ITV period drama television series Downton Abbey as Lady Sybil Crawley. As the youngest and most forward-thinking of the Grantham daughters, her character was a significant part of the series. Brown Findlay found the character "fascinating" and appreciated her "modern attitude to life." She remained with the series for three seasons, appearing in 20 episodes. Her departure from the show, a decision she made early on due to a desire for career advancement and to avoid typecasting, involved her character's death from eclampsia after giving birth in the third series, making her the first major cast member to leave.

Following her departure from Downton Abbey, Brown Findlay appeared as Abi Khan in the Black Mirror episode "Fifteen Million Merits" alongside English actor Daniel Kaluuya. This episode envisioned a dystopian future where individuals earn merits on exercise bikes, with their only escape being auditions for reality television judges.

2.2. Film Roles

In 2012, Brown Findlay became the face of the Dominic Jones jewellery line. She was cast in Not Another Happy Ending, a film directed by John McKay, released in 2013. The same year, she played Beverly Penn in the film adaptation of Mark Helprin's novel Winter's Tale (2014), co-starring with Colin Farrell and Russell Crowe. It was also reported that Tim Burton had considered her for the role of Alice in his film Alice in Wonderland. In March 2015, she was reported to play Shelley in the remake of The Crow.

She also appeared in the 2014 films Lullaby as Karen Lowenstein and The Riot Club as Rachel. In 2015, she co-starred in Paul McGuigan's Victor Frankenstein as Lorelei, an acrobat. In 2016, she starred as Bella Brown in This Beautiful Fantastic, a British romantic drama film directed and written by Simon Aboud. In this film, she portrayed a repressed foundling who forges a new life through her relationships with a curmudgeonly neighbor (Tom Wilkinson), a gifted cook (Andrew Scott), and an eccentric inventor (Jeremy Irvine).

In 2017, Brown Findlay joined the cast of the biopic feature film England Is Mine, initially titled Steven, which chronicled the early life and career of English singer Morrissey, co-founder of the indie rock band The Smiths. The film premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2017, with Jack Lowden in the lead role. Also in 2017, she voiced the character of Fay in the animated film Monster Family.

Her later film roles include Elizabeth McKenna in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2018), Marianne in The Banishing (2020), and Pamela Legat in the Netflix film Munich: The Edge of War (2021), which depicted events in Britain and Germany leading up to World War II. She reprised her voice role as Fay in Monster Family 2 (2021) and appeared as Miss Shaw in Iris Warriors (2022) and Lea in The Hanging Sun (2022). She is also listed as having a role in the upcoming film Mother Mary, which is currently in post-production.

2.3. Television Roles

Brown Findlay's television career has seen her take on a variety of roles across different genres. In 2012, she portrayed Alaïs Pelletier du Mas in the miniseries Labyrinth, an adaptation of the novel by Kate Mosse. In 2014, she played Mary Yellan in Jamaica Inn, a three-episode BBC One miniseries based on the novel by Daphne du Maurier.

In July 2015, she starred as Alice Aldridge, an emotionally conflicted stepmother, in The Outcast, a two-part BBC television adaptation of Sadie Jones' novel. From 2017 to 2019, Brown Findlay portrayed Charlotte Wells, a madam's daughter and prominent courtesan, in the period drama television series Harlots. Created by Alison Newman and Moira Buffini and inspired by The Covent Garden Ladies by Hallie Rubenhold, the series premiered on ITV Encore in the UK and Hulu Plus in the US. The show centered on Margaret Wells, who runs a brothel in 18th-century England and strives to raise her daughters in a chaotic household.

In 2020, she was a main cast member in the series Brave New World, based on the classic 1932 novel by Aldous Huxley, initially for NBCUniversal and later moving to the Peacock network. She also voiced the character Lenore in the Netflix animated series Castlevania from 2020 to 2021, appearing in 12 episodes across seasons 3 and 4. More recently, she played Izzie Todd in the BBC Two miniseries Life After Life (2022), and Tiffany "Tiffy" Moore in the Paramount+ series The Flatshare (2022). She is slated to play Lucy Lambert in the upcoming ITVX series Playing Nice in 2025.

2.4. Theatre Roles

Brown Findlay made her professional theatre debut in May 2015 at the Almeida Theatre in London, where she played Electra in a new adaptation of The Oresteia. Her performance received positive reviews, and the production subsequently transferred to the Trafalgar Theatre in London's West End. Following this, writer and director Robert Icke cast her again in his production of Uncle Vanya, where she played Sonya at the Almeida Theatre in February 2016.

In September 2016, it was announced that Brown Findlay would take on the role of Ophelia in a new production of Hamlet at the Almeida Theatre. This production was critically acclaimed and later moved to the West End, running until September 2017, with award-winning actor Andrew Scott portraying Hamlet. In 2024, she played Katharina Stockmann in a production of An Enemy of the People at the Duke of York's Theatre.

4.1. Film

4.2. Television

4.3. Theatre