Sophia Myles
Sophia Myles is an actor, born 1980.
Costume drama took Sophia Myles in and genre cinema kept her. She was a teenager in Mansfield Park and Oliver Twist in 1999, played Kate Nickleby in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, and appeared as Victoria Abberline in From Hell in 2001, a period film wearing a horror coat.
The 2000s then handed her the run she is best known for: Erika in Underworld and Underworld: Evolution, Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward in the live action Thunderbirds, Isolde in Tristan & Isolde, Freya in Outlander, and Beth Turner across Moonlight on television.
The striking thing about that list is how straight-faced all of it is. Myles plays fantasy material without a wink, which is exactly why Tristan & Isolde works better than its reputation and why Underworld wanted her back. She is also very good at the small hostile part, as the defence lawyer in Extras and Rebecca Bishop in A Discovery of Witches both demonstrate.
Since Transformers: Age of Extinction in 2014, where she played Darcy Tirrel, the work has been mostly television, including Spooks and A Discovery of Witches. Hers is the sort of career that gets described as underused, usually by people who have just rewatched one of the fantasy films and noticed she was the only person in it acting.
Movies (12)
- Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)
- Underworld (2003)
- Underworld: Evolution (2006)
- Hallam Foe (2007)
- Outlander (2008)
- From Hell (2001)
- Tristan & Isolde (2006)
- Art School Confidential (2006)
- Thunderbirds (2004)
- Mansfield Park (1999)
- The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (2001)
- Guest House Paradiso (1999)
TV (5)
Where to start with Sophia Myles
Tristan & Isolde makes the best case for her as a lead: a large, earnest romance that only functions if both leads believe every word, and she does.
Genre viewers should start with Underworld, then Underworld: Evolution if the first lands, with the warning that Erika is a supporting role in both. Moonlight is the cult television option, a vampire detective series with a following that never quite let go, and Beth Turner is the largest part in this list.
From Hell and Thunderbirds are the two ends of her 2000s, one grimy and one primary-coloured, and she is the best thing in the second. Hallam Foe is the pick if you want her in something small and strange, and Extras is a sharp little comic turn.