The Next Factor
Next week is the 60th anniversary of the Baftas. But who will win the coveted awards in the future? The Sunday Times Magazine assembled a cast of British talent with the ability to go all the way
Sophia Myles
The clergyman’s daughter, 26, was spotted by the screenwriter Julian Fellowes at 16 and played Lady Jane Grey in his BBC mini-series The Prince and the Pauper. She gave up a place at Cambridge to pursue an acting career. She appeared in several films, including Mansfield Park and From Hell, and television productions, but caught public attention as Lady Penelope in Thunderbirds. She was then Isolde in Tristan + Isolde, and has just made Outlander, a Viking story filmed in Nova Scotia, with John Hurt and James Caviezel. “I spent a lot of time hanging from cliffs in freezing rain,” she says. She also plays a lead role in the film Hallam Foe, with Jamie Bell. Many of her film and television roles have required her to be corseted: “I was so used to the corsets that when I was playing a modern role, I felt as though I was doing it in my pyjamas.”