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Hattie Morahan
Hattie Morahan (2010).jpg
Morahan at the production for The Children's Monologues (2010)
Born
Harriet Jane Morahan

1978
Lambeth, London, England
Occupation Actress
Years active 1996–present
Partner(s) Blake Ritson
Children 2
Parents
Relatives Andy Morahan
(half-brother)

Harriet Jane Morahan is an English actress. Her roles include Sister Clara in The Golden Compass (2007), Gale Benson in The Bank Job (2008), Alice in The Bletchley Circle (2012–2014), Ann in Mr. Holmes (2015), Rose Coyne in My Mother and Other Strangers (2016), Agathe/The Enchantress in Beauty and the Beast (2017), and as a voice actress, Doctor Who companion Helen Sinclair in Big Finish Productions.

Early life

Morahan was born in 1978, the younger daughter of 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. As a child, she attended parties thrown by Sir Laurence Olivier, who once helped her with her mathematics homework.

Morahan was educated at Frensham Heights School. She wanted to attend Newcastle University, but her father encouraged her to follow older sister Rebecca to New Hall, Cambridge, where she graduated with a BA in English in 2000. 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.

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.

Career

Morahan made her professional debut at 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. 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.

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

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. In the same year, for her Lyttelton Theatre performance as Nina in Katie Mitchell's staging of Chekhov's The Seagull, she was awarded second prize in the Ian Charleson Awards 2007.

TV credits include Bodies and BBC One's Outnumbered, where she portrays recurring 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. 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 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, 24 April – 7 June 2008.

..... 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 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 a 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.

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.

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. 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." The following year, Morahan starred in the five-part BBC series My Mother and Other Strangers.

Personal life

Morahan has been in a relationship with actor and director Blake Ritson since they met at Cambridge University in the late 1990s; the pair have been engaged since the mid 2000s. She worked as script supervisor on three of his short films and as costume designer and a 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." Morahan gave birth to the couple's daughter, Amity, in August 2016 and to their son in 2020.

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
New Tricks Totty TV series, 1 Episode
2005 Bodies Beth Lucas-Hall TV series, 7 episodes
2007–2011 Outnumbered Jane
2007 The Golden Compass Nurse Clara
2008 Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple Elaine Fortescue TV series, Episode: “A Pocket Full of Rye”
Sense and Sensibility Elinor Dashwood BBC, TV Mini-Series, 3 episodes
Bike Squad WPC Julie Cardigan
Trial & Retribution Sally Lawson TV series, “Kill the King: Part 1 & 2”
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, Episode: "Schooled in Murder"
Having You Lucy Feature film
Summer in February Laura Knight Feature film
2014 The Bletchley Circle Alice Merren “Blood on Their Hands: Part 1 & 2”, “Uncustomed Goods: Part 1 & 2”
2015 Mr. Holmes Ann Kelmot
Ballot Monkeys Siobhan Hope
The Outcast Elizabeth Aldridge TV series (1 episode)
Arthur and George Miss Jean Leckie TV series
2016 My Mother and Other Strangers Rose Coyne
Alice Through the Looking Glass Queen Elsemere Feature film
2017 Beauty and the Beast Agathe/Enchantress, Narrator
2018 Inside No. 9 Amber Series 4, episode 1: "Zanzibar"
2019 The Sleepers (Bez vědomí) Susanne Clayton
Official Secrets Yvonne Ridley
2020 Enola Holmes Lady Tewkesbury Netflix Feature Film
2022 Operation Mincemeat Iris Montagu Feature Film
2023 Luther: The Fallen Sun Corinne Aldrich Netflix Feature Film
Hijack British Foreign Minister Apple TV+ Original
2024 Fool Me Once Caroline Burkett Netflix Limited Series

Theatre

Year Title Role Notes
2001 Love in a Wood Lucy RSC Swan Theatre
Hamlet Gentlewoman player RSC Stratford and Barbican
The Prisoner's Dilemma Emilia RSC The Other Place and The Pit, Barbican
2002 Night of the Soul Tracy RSC The Pit, Barbican
The Circle Elizabeth UK tour
2003 Arsenic and Old Lace Elaine Strand Theatre, 25 February – 31 May
Power Louise de la Valliere Cottesloe Theatre, 3 July – 29 October
2004 Singer Ruby Oxford Stage Company, UK tour
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
The Seagull Nina Olivier Theatre, 27 June – 23 September
2008 The City by Martin Crimp Clair Royal Court Theatre, 24 April – 7 June
...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
2017 Anatomy of a ... Carol Royal Court Theatre, 3 June – 8 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
A Month in the Country Alice Keach adapted by Dave Sheasby from JL Carr's novella: BBC Radio 4 Saturday Drama series
2013 Welcome to Our Village, Please Invade Carefully Katrina Lyons BBC Radio 2
2015–2017 Doctor Who: Doom Coalition Helen Sinclair Big Finish Productions
2018 Tracks – Chimera Dr. Helen Ash BBC Radio 4
2018–2019 Doctor Who: Ravenous Helen Sinclair Big Finish Productions
2020–2022 Doctor Who: Stranded
2022 Doctor Who: The Eighth Doctor Adventures: What lies inside?
Doctor Who: The Eighth Doctor Adventures: Connections
2023 Enduring Love Clarissa BBC Radio 4

See also

Kids robot.svg In Spanish: Hattie Morahan para niños

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