Jodhi May

Award winning British actor Jodhi May has garnered international acclaim for her roles across television, film and theatre throughout her career. At just 13 years old she was the youngest ever recipient of the ‘Best Actress’ award at the Cannes Film Festival for her role as ‘Molly Roth’ in the Working Title produced, Anti-Aparthied drama A World Apart, written by Shawn Slovo, and directed by two-time Oscar winner Chris Menges. Since then, she has continued to win acclaim for leading roles on screen and stage, consolidating her reputation as one of the UK’s most exciting and versatile actors.

Jodhi recently wrapped a leading role in the hotly anticipated HBO series, Dune: Prophecy. Jodhi plays the formidable ‘Empress Natalya’, a Lady Macbeth-like figure, to Mark Strong’s prevaricating Emperor Corrino. Set in the phenomenally successful & much-talked about Dune universe created by Frank Herbert, the prequel promises a thrilling narrative delving into the origins of the powerful Bene Gesserit. The series, which also stars Emily Watson and Olivia Williams, will premiere later this year on HBO in the US and Sky in the UK and the rest of the world.

Jodhi’s most recent television credits include ‘Queen Anne’ in the Disney+ series Renegade Nell, from BAFTA-award-winning Happy Valley creator Sally Wainwright. The eight-part fantasy action-adventure from Sex Education producers and director follows ‘Nell Jackson’, played by Derry Girls’s Louisa Harland, as a highway woman, who becomes the most notorious outlaw in 18th-century England.

Jodhi’s other television credits include leading roles such as ‘Queen Calanthe’ in Netflix’s hugely popular fantasy drama series The Witcher, where she starred opposite Henry Cavill. The show, which has been running for five seasons, has become one of Netflix’s most-viewed programmes of all time, amassing 462.5 million hours of viewing. She can also be seen portraying art-world legend Peggy Guggenheim alongside Gillian Jacobs and Cory Stoll in Netflix’s Transatlantic, created by Anna Winger, the creator of Netflix hit series Unorthodox. Additionally, Jodhi played civil rights activist Selma James in Steve McQueen’s BAFTA Award-winning series Small Axe for BBC/Amazon, and ‘Vera Hobart’, the socialite paramour of Suranne Jones’s character in Sally Wainwright’s Gentleman Jack for BBC/HBO. She also took the lead role of grieving Liverpudlian mother ‘Coleen O’Shea’ in Common, Jimmy McGovern’s critically acclaimed, award-winning BBC criminal justice drama, as well as appearing in the HBO hit Game of Thrones.

In film, Jodhi starred opposite Daniel Day-Lewis in Michael Mann’s BAFTA and Oscar-winning epic historical masterpiece The Last of the Mohicans for 20th Century Fox. Based on James Fenimore Cooper’s novel, the film has continued to captivate audiences since its release, solidifying its status as a beloved classic, and grossing over $75 million worldwide. She also appeared in Terrance Davies’s acclaimed Edith Wharton adaptation The House of Mirth, starring opposite Gillian Anderson, and in Davies’s directed Emily Dickinson biopic A Quiet Passion, alongside Cynthia Nixon. Jodhi also featured in Ed Zwick’s Second World War drama Defiance, starring Daniel Craig. Her most recent feature film credits include the Cornish folk horror indie feature Severed Sun, opposite Emma Appleton, Prizefighter, opposite Russell Crowe and Ray Winstone, and the BIFA award-winning The Silent Twins, alongside Letitia Wright.

On stage, Jodhi has taken on leading roles, including in Mark Haddon’s Polar Bears at the Donmar Warehouse, directed by Jamie Lloyd, and in Christopher Hampton’s The Talking Cure, opposite Ralph Fiennes, directed by Howard Davies at the Royal National Theatre. She also appeared in Chekhov’s Platonov at The Almeida, opposite Helen McCrory, and in Chekhov’s The Seagull, opposite Cillian Murphy, at the Edinburgh International Festival.

Jodhi performed in a French-language production of Caryl Churchill’s Far Away, opposite Kathryn Hunter, directed by the legendary Peter Brook at Le Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris. Additionally, she played the lead role of Una in David Harrower’s Olivier Award-winning Blackbird, directed by the renowned Peter Stein at the Noël Coward Theatre in London’s West End. Her performance was described as “utterly shattering” by The Telegraph and “performed throughout with the kind of bruising integrity that makes for an evening of undiluted and harrowing power” by the BBC.