Leanne Best

From Liverpool to Hammer Horror

Leanne Best didn't need to leave Liverpool to understand what this profession was about. She studied at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, where she learned that acting is, above all, a matter of physical endurance. Her early years were spent on local theater stages and supporting roles that barely covered the rent.

Her profile rose sharply in 2015 when she stepped into the role of The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death. Playing a ghost trapped by guilt requires a control of gesture that few actors master without slipping into caricature. She achieved it with an astonishing economy of movement.

And the gamble paid off.

That same 2015, she appeared in Star Wars: The Force Awakens as Min Sakul. Although her screen time was brief, the experience taught her how Hollywood's big machinery works. But her natural habitat has always been high-intensity British drama.

In 2016 she joined the cast of Home Fires and shortly after appeared in Black Mirror, in the episode Shut Up and Dance. Those short but electrifying roles helped her build a reputation as a reliable actress who isn't afraid of uncomfortable scripts.

The face that holds the tension

British television found in her the perfect ally for crime stories. In 2017 she played Jackie Brickford in Line of Duty, and her presence brought the moral ambiguity the plot needed. She wasn't trying to make the audience like her; she was there to serve the story.

But it was in Cold Feet that she showed she could handle dramatic comedy with the same precision she brought to suspense. Between 2016 and 2017, her character Tina Reynolds became one of the pillars of the series. It drew an average audience of 6 million viewers in the UK during its original broadcast.

Theater was her first refuge.

She never left the stage completely, because she considers it the only place where an actor has full control. In 2018 she starred in Sweat at the Donmar Warehouse in London, and critics praised her ability to embody the despair of the working class. It was grueling physical work that kept her on stage for months.

In 2020, she stepped into the shoes of Frida Rask for the Netflix series Young Wallander. The production moved the young detective into a contemporary setting, and Best brought the maturity needed to balance the cast. Her portrayal of a pragmatic police chief avoided all the usual clichés of the genre.

Maturing in British Thrillers

Her projects from the 2020s show a professional who chooses very carefully where to put her energy. In 2022, she starred in Compulsion, playing a woman trapped in a web of debt and addiction. It was a leading role that required her to appear in nearly every shot of the miniseries.

Because Best prefers broken characters to heroic ones.

In 2024, she joined the fifth season of The Bay to play the mysterious mother of a victim in Morecambe. Her presence in regional dramas like this helps lift the tone of the production, thanks to a naturalness that seems improvised but is meticulously rehearsed.

For 2025, she is scheduled to premiere Lockerbie, a television series about the terrorist bombing of 1988 over Scotland. In this BBC and Netflix production, she plays one of the key figures in the investigation that followed the disaster. Filming took place mainly in locations in Scotland and Morocco on an estimated budget of 20 million pounds.

She closed out 2024 by wrapping production on the independent drama The Gatherer. The film was shot entirely in natural light in rural areas of northern England.