Hattie Morahan

Hattie Morahan

Morahan at the production for The Children's Monologues (2010)
Born Harriet Jane Morahan
(1978-03-07) 7 March 1978
Lambeth, London, England
Occupation Actress
Years active 1996–present
Partner(s) Blake Ritson
Parent(s) Christopher Morahan
Anna Carteret
Relatives

Harriet Jane "Hattie" Morahan (born 1978) is an English television, film, and stage actress. Her notable roles include Alice in The Bletchley Circle, Gale Benson in The Bank Job (2008) and Ann in Mr. Holmes (2015).

Early life

Morahan was born in Lambeth, London, England. She is the younger daughter of television and film director Christopher Morahan and actress Anna Carteret. Her older sister Rebecca is a theatre director, and her half-brother Andy is a music video and film director.[1] As a child, she attended parties thrown by Sir Laurence Olivier,[2] who once helped her with her mathematics homework.[3]

Morahan was educated at Frensham Heights School. Though she wanted to attend Newcastle University, her father encouraged her to follow older sister Rebecca to New Hall, Cambridge,[4][5] where she graduated with a BA in English, in 2000.[6] While at Cambridge, she directed and appeared in student productions, including A View from the Bridge, which won her 'the most outstanding performance' award at the 1999 National Student Drama Festival for her role as Catherine.[7]

Following Cambridge, Morahan's parents encouraged her to attend the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, but she was eager to begin working and told her parents she would enroll only if she was not working professionally within a year.[2]

Career

Morahan made her professional debut at the age of 17, playing the leading role of Una Gwithian in a two-part BBC television adaptation of The Peacock Spring (1996).

Morahan joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2001, making her theatre debut at Stratford-upon-Avon in Love in a Wood and her London debut at the Barbican Theatre (that December) in Hamlet. Other credits for the company included Night of the Soul and Prisoner's Dilemma.

At the Tricycle Theatre in March 2004 she played Ruby, a 1960s hippie who becomes a disenchanted 1980s political wife, for the Oxford Stage company revival of Peter Flannery's Singer.[8] In the same year she first worked with Katie Mitchell at the National Theatre when she starred in the title role of Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis.[9]

In July 2005, she appeared again at the National in Nick Dear's Power, staged in the Cottesloe Theatre[10] and also won acclaim at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, in September 2005 playing Viola in Ian Brown's production of Twelfth Night.[11]

In 2006, she played the leading role, of Penelope Toop, in Douglas Hodge's touring revival of Philip King's hit farce See How They Run.[12] In the same year, for her Lyttelton Theatre performance as Nina in Katie Mitchell's staging of Chekhov's The Seagull,[13] she was awarded second prize in the Ian Charleson Awards 2007.

TV credits include Bodies and BBC One's Outnumbered,[14] where she portrays reoccurring character Jane. She has appeared in series 1, 2 and 4 of Outnumbered, as well as the Christmas Specials in 2009, 2011 and 2012.

In January 2008, she appeared in the film The Bank Job, and she played a mounted policewoman in the ITV comedy drama pilot Bike Squad.

Giving a career enhancing performance, she also played Elinor Dashwood in BBC One's three-part adaptation, by Andrew Davies, of Jane Austen's novel Sense and Sensibility, first broadcast on New Year's Day 2008.[15] On 13 June 2008, she won Best Actress at the 14th Shanghai Television Festival for her performance.

On 26 February 2008, she played Libby, a graduate investigating mis-selling of bank loans, in D.J. Britton's radio play When Greed Becomes Fear, a BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play 'inspired by the current sub-prime lending fiasco in America.'

She worked again with director Katie Mitchell, co-starring with Benedict Cumberbatch in The City, a new, darkly comic mystery play by Martin Crimp,[16] 24 April – 7 June 2008.[2]

In July 2008, she returned to the National to appear in ...some trace of her, Katie Mitchell's adaptation of Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, co-starring Ben Whishaw at the Cottesloe Theatre,[17] while later in the year she played Mary in T.S. Eliot's The Family Reunion at the Donmar Warehouse.[18] She returned to the National in April 2009 to play Kay Conway in Rupert Goold's production of J. B. Priestley's Time and the Conways in the Lyttelton auditorium [19] and also Dawn in Caryl Churchill's Three More Sleepless Nights in the same season.

On 28 February 2010, she appeared as Miss Enid in Lark Rise to Candleford, and then as Martina Twain in the BBC adaptation of Martin Amis's Money. In the theatre, she played Annie in The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard at The Old Vic theatre, directed by Anna Mackmin, from April to June 2010; a year later returning to the stage in Thea Sharrock's pared-down Sheffield Crucible revival of David Hare's 1978 Plenty: Morahan affords the heady sensation of watching an actress at the top of her game (Sunday Times, Culture, 14 February 2011).

From 29 June to 26 July 2012, she played the lead role of Nora, opposite Dominic Rowan's Torvald, in new version of A Doll's House by Simon Stephens at London's Young Vic Theatre, in a production directed by Carrie Cracknell and designed by Ian MacNeil. Her performance saw her named Best Actress at the 2012 Evening Standard Awards and the 2012 Critics' Circle Theatre Awards.[20]

From 8 August to 26 October 2013, Morahan reprised her role as Nora Helmer alongside Dominic Rowan, who returned as her husband Torvald, at the Duke of York's Theatre London.[21]

In July 2015, Morahan played the role of doomed mother Elizabeth Aldridge in the BBC’s two-part television adaptation of Sadie Jones’ debut novel The Outcast.[22] The Guardian's Julia Raeside was impressed with Morahan’s portrayal, writing, "She is so perfectly cast, the lack of her is palpable on screen. We miss her too."[23]

Personal life

Morahan is engaged to the actor and director Blake Ritson, whom she met at Cambridge.[24] She worked as script supervisor on three of his short films, also as costume designer and performer on Good Boy (2008). "He needs help behind the scenes," she told the Sunday Times. "I'm happy to supply it. I just like to get on with it."[2]

Credits

Film and television

Year Title Role Notes
1996 The Peacock Spring Una Gwithian BBC
2002 Too Close To The Bone Short
2004 Out of Time Receptionist Short
2004 New Tricks Totty Guest star
2005 Bodies Beth Lucas
2007–2011 Outnumbered Jane
2007 The Golden Compass Nurse Clara
2008 Sense and Sensibility Elinor Dashwood BBC
2008 Bike Squad WPC Julie Cardigan
2008 Trial & Retribution: To Kill A King Sally Lawson
2008 The Bank Job Gale Benson
2010 Lark Rise to Candleford Enid Fairley TV series (1 episode)
2011 Lewis: Old, Unhappy, Far Off Things Ruth Brooks ITV1
2012 Eternal Law Hannah English TV series (6 episodes)
2013 Midsomer Murders Hayley Brantner TV series (1 episode: "Schooled in Murder")
2013 Having You Lucy Feature film
2013 Summer in February Laura Knight Feature film
2014 The Bletchley Circle Alice Merren TV series (4 episodes)
2015 Mr. Holmes Ann Kelmot
2015 Ballot Monkeys Siobhan Hope
2015 The Outcast Elizabeth Aldridge TV series (1 episode)
2015 Arthur and George Miss Jean Leckie TV series

Theatre

Year Title Role Notes
2001 Love In A Wood Lucy RSC Swan Theatre
2001 Hamlet Gentlewoman player RSC Stratford and Barbican
2001 The Prisoner's Dilemma Emilia RSC The Other Place and The Pit, Barbican
2002 Night of the Soul Tracy RSC The Pit, Barbican
2002 The Circle Elizabeth UK tour
2003 Arsenic and Old Lace Elaine Strand Theatre, 25 February–31 May
2003 Power Louise de la Valliere Cottesloe Theatre, 3 July–29 October
2004 Singer Ruby Oxford Stage Company, UK tour
2004 Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis Iphigenia Lyttelton Theatre, 22 June–7 September
2005 Twelfth Night Viola West Yorkshire Playhouse, 21 September–22 October
2006 See How They Run Penelope Toop UK tour
2006 The Seagull Nina Olivier Theatre, 27 June–23 September
2008 The City by Martin Crimp Clair Royal Court Theatre, 24 April–7 June
2008 ...some trace of her Nastasya Cottesloe (National) Theatre; 23 July–21 October
2008–2009 The Family Reunion Mary Donmar Warehouse, 25 November 2008 – 10 January 2009
2009 Time and the Conways Kate Conway National Theatre Lyttelton; 28 April–27 July
2010 The Real Thing Annie Old Vic; 10 April–5 June
2011 Plenty Susan Traherne Crucible Theatre Studio, Sheffield; 8–26 February
2012 A Doll's House Nora Helmer Young Vic; 29 June–26 July

Radio

Year Title Role Notes
2006 Trevor's World of Sport Carrie Guest star
2010–2011 I, Claudius Agrippina the Elder BBC Radio 4; 28 November 2010 – 2 January 2011
2010 The Art of Deception Jessica Brown BBC Radio 4; 20–24 December 2010
2012 Miss MacKenzie Miss MacKenzie BBC Radio 4 Extra
2013 Welcome to Our Village, Please Invade Carefully Katrina Lyons BBC Radio 2

References

  1. 1 2 Morahan, Andy. "About". AndyMorahan.com. Retrieved 28 October 2015.
  2. 1 2 3 4 White, Lesley (20 April 2008). "We’re just wild about Hattie Morahan". The Times. Retrieved 19 November 2015.
  3. ↑ Durrant, Nancy (20 January 2015). "Hattie Morahan on why it’s fun to behave badly". The Times. Retrieved 19 November 2015.
  4. ↑ "Relative Values: Anna Carteret and her daughter Hattie Morahan". The Times. 30 November 2008. Retrieved 19 November 2015.
  5. ↑ "Congregations of the Regent House on 25 and 26 June 1999". Cambridge University Reporter.
  6. ↑ "Reporter 26/7/00: Congregation of the Regent House on 22 July 2000". Cambridge University Reporter.
  7. ↑ Rees, Jasper (21 April 2008). "Hattie Morahan: 'I decided not to think about Emma Thompson'". The Daily Telegraph (London).
  8. ↑ "Theatre review: Singer at Oxford Stage Company at the Tricycle, Kilburn". Britishtheatreguide.info. Retrieved 2014-01-29.
  9. ↑ Gerald Berkowitz (2004-06-24). "The Stage / Reviews / Iphigenia at Aulis". Thestage.co.uk. Retrieved 2014-01-29.
  10. ↑ "Theatre review: Power at RNT Cottesloe". Britishtheatreguide.info. Retrieved 2014-01-29.
  11. ↑ "Review of Twelfth Night". The Stage.
  12. ↑ "Theatre review: See How They Run at Richmond Theatre and touring". Britishtheatreguide.info. Retrieved 2014-01-29.
  13. ↑ John Thaxter (2006-06-29). "The Stage / Reviews / The Seagull". Thestage.co.uk. Retrieved 2014-01-29.
  14. ↑ "Outnumbered Press Review". BBC. August 17, 2007.
  15. ↑ Hart, Christopher (January 13, 2008). "Hattie Morahan's Elinor is as good a piece of acting as you're going to see this year". Sunday Times.
  16. ↑ Billington, Michael (30 April 2008). "Theatre review: The City / Royal Court, London". The Guardian.
  17. ↑ Aleks Sierz (2008-07-31). "The Stage / Reviews / ... some trace of her". Thestage.co.uk. Retrieved 2014-01-29.
  18. ↑ John Thaxter (2008-11-26). "The Stage / Reviews / The Family Reunion". Thestage.co.uk. Retrieved 2014-01-29.
  19. ↑ John Thaxter (2009-05-06). "The Stage / Reviews / Time and the Conways". Thestage.co.uk. Retrieved 2014-01-29.
  20. ↑ "United Agents | Hattie Morahan". United Agents. Retrieved 29 January 2014.
  21. ↑ "Interview with Hattie Morahan". Lastminutetheatretickets.com. 2013-08-05. Retrieved 2014-01-29.
  22. ↑ "BBC One: The Outcast: Episode 1 credits". http://www.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 20 July 2015. External link in |website= (help)
  23. ↑ Raeside, Julia (13 July 2015). "The Outcast review – ‘I feared for Sadie Jones’s adaptation of her perfect novel – but it is excellent’". The Guardian (London). Retrieved 20 July 2015.
  24. ↑ Jones, Alice (28 July 2008). "Modern miss: Harrie Morahan is ditching bonnets in favour of cutting-edge theatre work". London: The Independent.

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Tuesday, March 15, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.