Laura Haddock
Laura Haddock is an actor, born 1985.
Laura Haddock's most-seen work is a few minutes long. She plays Meredith Quill in Guardians of the Galaxy and its sequel, the mother in the hospital-room prologue that the whole first film hangs its emotional weight on, and she does it with almost no dialogue and a great deal of held eye contact. Most actors would trade a lead role for a scene that load-bearing.
The rest is a British television career, and a good one. Lucrezia Donati in Da Vinci's Demons gave her three seasons of a woman playing several sides at once, which suits her, because Haddock is at her best when a character is managing information rather than expressing feelings. Zoe Walker in White Lines is the same skill in a warmer climate, an English woman in Ibiza whose search for her brother keeps turning up things she would rather not know. Max Meladze in The Recruit is the sharpest version yet, a genuinely funny performance built on the pleasure of being the smartest and most dangerous person in every scene.
Film has been less generous to her. Transformers: The Last Knight is an enormous, incoherent picture in which she is largely required to explain the plot. The Inbetweeners Movie and Downton Abbey: A New Era are more fun, and both cast her as the object of somebody else's fantasy, which is a small assignment played well. The television is where to look.
Movies (10)
TV (12)
Where to start with Laura Haddock
Watch The Recruit before anything else. It is the role that shows what she can do with a lead, and the comic timing is a surprise if you only know her from the Marvel prologue.
White Lines next, a mystery series with a genuinely strange tone, glossy and unpleasant by turns, and she anchors it. Da Vinci's Demons is the earlier version of the same strengths in a show that is much sillier and knows it.
Guardians of the Galaxy is worth revisiting for how much she achieves in a handful of shots. The Inbetweeners Movie is better than a sitcom spin-off has any right to be, and The Capture is the underseen one, a paranoid British surveillance thriller where her part is small and the series is excellent.
The television leads
Television has given her the better material by some distance. White Lines is a Mediterranean mystery she carries entirely on her own, The Recruit lets her play someone genuinely unpredictable, and Da Vinci's Demons was the early series that proved she could front one at all.
The blockbuster roles
Small parts in very large films. She plays Meredith Quill in both Guardians films, which amounts to a few minutes of screen time carrying an unreasonable share of the emotional weight. Transformers: The Last Knight is the biggest role and comfortably the worst film.
The British television years
The decade of guest spots and supporting parts that got her noticed. The Inbetweeners Movie is the comic role most British viewers know her from, and The Colour of Magic is an early Terry Pratchett adaptation that is worth a look for the casting alone.