Emily Cox

The legacy of pianists

Her parents moved to Vienna to pursue careers as pianists. Emily Cox was born in the Austrian capital in 1985 and grew up in a home where silence was broken only by classical music rehearsals. But she had no interest in playing the keys.

In 2003, she decided her path lay on stage and enrolled at the Max Reinhardt Seminar. That acting school was her first real step away from the musical destiny her British and Irish family seemed to have planned for her.

She wanted something else.

In 2008, she made her big-screen debut in the short film Verwehte. That work immediately opened the doors of German and Austrian television to her. She worked steadily in smaller European productions until the Anglo-American market came knocking.

The Mud of Northumbria

In 2015, she landed the role of Brida in the series The Last Kingdom. It was the project that overnight changed her international profile. The series started on the BBC and years later became a global phenomenon on a streaming platform.

She played a Saxon warrior raised by Vikings across five full seasons. Seven years of filming in forests and mud that forced her to split her time between Vienna and Budapest. Yet the actress never stepped away from European art-house cinema during that time.

And the risk paid off handsomely.

In 2017, she agreed to take part in Jerks, an improv comedy that broke the mold of German television. There, she played a fictionalized version of herself. The contrast between the violence of her historical role and the uncomfortable humor of the German series defined her professional profile at that time.

Maturity After the Shield

In 2022, she starred in Alma and Oskar, directed by Dieter Berner. In this film, she played Alma Mahler, a complex figure in Austrian history that brought her back to her Viennese roots. It was a shoot of ten intense weeks that demanded a far more restrained dramatic range than her earlier work.

But massive success did not keep her away from smaller projects.

Because Emily Cox has always preferred to alternate between English and German without giving priority to one industry over the other. In 2023, she officially closed her chapter as Brida with the release of the feature film Seven Kings Must Die. That production brought an end to nearly a decade tied to the same epic storyline.

In 2024, producer Constanze Schumann confirmed that Cox would take part in new fiction projects in Central Europe. The actress maintains her residence in Vienna and avoids the big red carpets of Los Angeles unless a contract is involved.

In 2023, the estimated budget of her latest British production exceeded 15 million euros.