Sophie Rundle

Technique vs. Method

Sophie Rundle was born in High Wycombe in 1988 and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She left there in 2011 with a notebook full of notes and an absolute determination to work in British television. She was not chasing the quick fame of London's red carpets. Instead, she preferred to take on supporting roles in period dramas, where historical accuracy mattered more than the glow of the cameras.

In 2012, she appeared in the version of Great Expectations directed by Mike Newell. It was a brief role, but it helped casting directors notice her ability to hold a gaze. Shortly after, she landed The Bletchley Circle between 2012 and 2014, playing a young woman with a photographic memory who solved crimes in postwar London.

The risk of being typecast in teacup dramas was real.

But in 2013, her luck changed when she joined the cast of Peaky Blinders. For nearly a decade, she played Ada Thorne, the only woman in the Shelby family who dared to challenge Tommy from an intellectual and political standpoint. Rundle played her with a very restrained style over the show's six seasons, until it ended in 2022.

Audiences will always remember her for that fur coat and her contempt for organized crime in Birmingham.

Taking Control of the Narrative

In 2019, she took on the role of Ann Walker in Gentleman Jack. The series demanded a physical vulnerability Rundle had not explored until then. She shot scenes of exhausting emotional intensity while the crew moved across rural locations in Yorkshire. Her chemistry with Suranne Jones was the driving force of the production during the episodes that aired between 2019 and 2022.

Television gave her stability, but she wanted to try something different behind the camera. Acting alone wasn't enough to understand how the UK industry really works. So she founded the production company Bone Garden Productions with her partner Matt Stokoe. Her goal was to finance independent projects with tight budgets and daring scripts.

In 2020, the film Rose was released. It was a horror thriller in which she played a woman who lived isolated in a cabin due to a strange illness. The shoot took place in Wales under harsh weather conditions that forced the crew to be reduced to the legal minimum.

The bet on producing her own work paid off.

Rundle appeared in Bodyguard in 2018. The series drew massive ratings on the BBC, and she played the protagonist's wife. It was a technical job that required her to convey constant tension with very little explanatory dialogue. In 2023, she joined the cast of The Diplomat to play a detective in an international espionage setting.

In 2024, she starred in the series After the Flood. During the filming of the flood scenes in Manchester, she spent more than six hours a day submerged in tanks of cold water. The production budget set aside a specific allocation for portable heating systems to prevent hypothermia among the cast in every take. The series wrapped its run with an average of six million viewers per episode in the United Kingdom.