Hannah Waddingham

Hannah Waddingham stands nearly six feet tall and has a voice that could shatter glass. Long before the world knew her for shouting a word of punishment in a dragon series, she already ruled the stages of London's West End. It wasn't an overnight success.

Her training runs in the family: the daughter of an opera singer and granddaughter of musicians, the stage was the only possible destination. In 2000, she took part in the musical The Beautiful Game. It marked the start of a decade of powerful performances in shows such as Into the Woods and The Wizard of Oz.

And theater gave her the discipline of live performance.

She received three Olivier Award nominations before turning forty. But British television only offered her supporting roles in sitcoms or fast-paced medical dramas. Her move to the big screen seemed elusive, while she kept singing eight shows a week in London and New York.

From the Westerosi bell to Richmond soccer

In 2015, she donned a gray habit and held a handbell for Game of Thrones. Her role as Septa Unella didn't last long on screen, but her image became lodged in pop culture memory. It was a physically demanding job in which she spent hours in the rain of Dubrovnik to shoot a single sequence.

But her career shifted gears in 2020 with the release of Ted Lasso.

She played Rebecca Welton, the owner of a soccer club eager for revenge. The Apple TV+ series let her use her comedic range and commanding physical presence to build a character with rough edges. She won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 2021 after a first season that surprised the industry with its upbeat tone.

Conquering big-budget productions

Hollywood took a while to realize Waddingham worked just as well in a musical as in an action film. In 2023, she hosted the Eurovision Song Contest in Liverpool and showed an improvisational skill few actors possess. That global exposure opened the door to big-budget franchises once and for all.

She appeared in The Fall Guy in 2024 under the direction of David Leitch. In this production, she played an unscrupulous film producer and shared the bill with Ryan Gosling. It was a role that let her move away from the warmth of her earlier work to show a more cynical side.

The industry turns to her for large-scale projects.

In 2024, she voiced Jinx in the animated film The Garfield Movie. She also joined the cast of the eighth installment of Mission: Impossible, with a release scheduled for 2025. These productions overlap with her interest in keeping up her own musical projects and TV specials.

Her contract for the espionage franchise alongside Tom Cruise was signed after months of negotiations over her availability. Filming her scenes on an aircraft carrier took exactly five days of intense technical work.