Hattie Morahan

Hattie Morahan
Morahan at the production for The Children's Monologues (2010)
Born	Harriet Jane Morahan (1978-03-07) 7 March 1978 Lambeth, London, England
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1996–present
Partner(s)	Blake Ritson
Parent(s)	Christopher Morahan Anna Carteret
Relatives	Rebecca Morahan (sister) Andy Morahan (half-brother)

Harriet Jane "Hattie" Morahan (born 1978) is an English television, film, and stage actress. Her notable roles include Alice in The Bletchley Circle, Gale Benson in The Bank Job (2008) and Ann in Mr. Holmes (2015).

Early life

Morahan was born in Lambeth, London, England. She is the younger daughter of television and film director Christopher Morahan and actress Anna Carteret. Her older sister Rebecca is a theatre director, and her half-brother Andy is a music video and film director. As a child, she attended parties thrown by Sir Lawrence Olivier, who once helped her with her mathematics homework.

Morahan was educated at Frensham Heights School. Though she wanted to attend Newcastle University, her father encouraged her to follow older sister Rebecca to New Hall, Cambridge, where she graduated with a BA in English, in 2000. While at Cambridge, she directed and appeared in student productions, including A View from the Bridge, which won her 'the most outstanding performance' award at the 1999 National Student Drama Festival for her role as Catherine.

Following Cambridge, Morahan's parents encouraged her to attend the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, but she was eager to begin working and told her parents she would enroll only if she was not working professionally within a year.

Career

Morahan made her professional debut at the age of 17, playing the leading role of Una Gwithian in a two-part BBC television adaptation of The Peacock Spring (1996).

Morahan joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2001, making her theatre debut at Stratford-upon-Avon in Love in a Wood and her London debut at the Barbican Theatre (that December) in Hamlet. Other credits for the company included Night of the Soul and Prisoner's Dilemma.

At the Tricycle Theatre in March 2004 she played Ruby, a 1960s hippie who becomes a disenchanted 1980s political wife, for the Oxford Stage company revival of Peter Flannery's Singer. In the same year she first worked with Katie Mitchell at the National Theatre when she starred in the title role of Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis.

In July 2005, she appeared again at the National in Nick Dear's Power, staged in the Cottesloe Theatre and also won acclaim at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, in September 2005 playing Viola in Ian Brown's production of Twelfth Night.

In 2006, she played the leading role, of Penelope Toop, in Douglas Hodge's touring revival of Philip King's hit farce See How They Run. In the same year, for her Lyttelton Theatre performance as Nina in Katie Mitchell's staging of Chekhov's The Seagull, she was awarded second prize in the Ian Charleson Awards 2007.

TV credits include Bodies and BBC One's Outnumbered, where she portrays reoccurring character Jane. She has appeared in series 1, 2 and 4 of Outnumbered, as well as the Christmas Specials in 2009, 2011 and 2012.

In January 2008, she appeared in the film The Bank Job, and she played a mounted policewoman in the ITV comedy drama pilot Bike Squad.

Giving a career enhancing performance, she also played Elinor Dashwood in BBC One's three-part adaptation, by Andrew Davies, of Jane Austen's novel Sense and Sensibility, first broadcast on New Year's Day 2008. On 13 June 2008, she won Best Actress at the 14th Shanghai Television Festival for her performance.

On 26 February 2008, she played Libby, a graduate investigating mis-selling of bank loans, in D.J. Britton's radio play When Greed Becomes Fear, a BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play 'inspired by the current sub-prime lending fiasco in America.'

She worked again with director Katie Mitchell, co-starring with Benedict Cumberbatch in The City, a new, darkly comic mystery play by Martin Crimp, 24 April – 7 June 2008.

In July 2008, she returned to the National to appear in ...some trace of her, Katie Mitchell's adaptation of Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, co-starring Ben Whishaw at the Cottesloe Theatre, while later in the year she played Mary in T.S. Eliot's The Family Reunion at the Donmar Warehouse. She returned to the National in April 2009 to play Kay Conway in Rupert Goold's production of J. B. Priestley's Time and the Conways in the Lyttelton auditorium and also Dawn in Caryl Churchill's Three More Sleepless Nights in the same season.

On 28 February 2010, she appeared as Miss Enid in Lark Rise to Candleford, and then as Martina Twain in the BBC adaptation of Martin Amis's Money. In the theatre, she played Annie in The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard at The Old Vic theatre, directed by Anna Mackmin, from April to June 2010; a year later returning to the stage in Thea Sharrock's pared-down Sheffield Crucible revival of David Hare's 1978 Plenty: Morahan affords the heady sensation of watching an actress at the top of her game (Sunday Times, Culture, 14 February 2011).

From 29 June to 26 July 2012, she played the lead role of Nora, opposite Dominic Rowan's Torvald, in new version of A Doll's House by Simon Stephens at London's Young Vic Theatre, in a production directed by Carrie Cracknell and designed by Ian MacNeil. Her performance saw her named Best Actress at the 2012 Evening Standard Awards and the 2012 Critics' Circle Theatre Awards.

From 8 August to 26 October 2013, Morahan reprised her role as Nora Helmer alongside Dominic Rowan, who returned as her husband Torvald, at the Duke of York's Theatre London.

In July 2015, Morahan played the role of doomed mother Elizabeth Aldridge in the BBC’s two-part television adaptation of Sadie Jones’ debut novel The Outcast. The Guardian's Julia Raeside was impressed with Morahan’s portrayal, writing, "She is so perfectly cast, the lack of her is palpable on screen. We miss her too."

Personal life

Morahan is engaged to the actor and director Blake Ritson, whom she met at Cambridge. She worked as script supervisor on three of his short films, also as costume designer and performer on Good Boy (2008). "He needs help behind the scenes," she told the Sunday Times. "I'm happy to supply it. I just like to get on with it."

Credits

Film and television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1996	The Peacock Spring	Una Gwithian	BBC
2002	Too Close To The Bone		Short
2004	Out of Time	Receptionist	Short
2004	New Tricks	Totty	Guest star
2005	Bodies	Beth Lucas
2007–2011	Outnumbered	Jane
2007	The Golden Compass	Nurse Clara
2008	Sense and Sensibility	Elinor Dashwood	BBC
2008	Bike Squad	WPC Julie Cardigan
2008	Trial & Retribution: To Kill A King	Sally Lawson
2008	The Bank Job	Gale Benson
2010	Lark Rise to Candleford	Enid Fairley	TV series (1 episode)
2011	Lewis: Old, Unhappy, Far Off Things	Ruth Brooks	ITV1
2012	Eternal Law	Hannah English	TV series (6 episodes)
2013	Midsomer Murders	Hayley Brantner	TV series (1 episode: "Schooled in Murder")
2013	Having You	Lucy	Feature film
2013	Summer in February	Laura Knight	Feature film
2014	The Bletchley Circle	Alice Merren	TV series (4 episodes)
2015	Mr. Holmes	Ann Kelmot
2015	Ballot Monkeys	Siobhan Hope
2015	The Outcast	Elizabeth Aldridge	TV series (1 episode)
2015	Arthur and George	Miss Jean Leckie	TV series

Theatre

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2001	Love In A Wood	Lucy	RSC Swan Theatre
2001	Hamlet	Gentlewoman player	RSC Stratford and Barbican
2001	The Prisoner's Dilemma	Emilia	RSC The Other Place and The Pit, Barbican
2002	Night of the Soul	Tracy	RSC The Pit, Barbican
2002	The Circle	Elizabeth	UK tour
2003	Arsenic and Old Lace	Elaine	Strand Theatre, 25 February–31 May
2003	Power	Louise de la Valliere	Cottesloe Theatre, 3 July–29 October
2004	Singer	Ruby	Oxford Stage Company, UK tour
2004	Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis	Iphigenia	Lyttelton Theatre, 22 June–7 September
2005	Twelfth Night	Viola	West Yorkshire Playhouse, 21 September–22 October
2006	See How They Run	Penelope Toop	UK tour
2006	The Seagull	Nina	Olivier Theatre, 27 June–23 September
2008	The City by Martin Crimp	Clair	Royal Court Theatre, 24 April–7 June
2008	...some trace of her	Nastasya	Cottesloe (National) Theatre; 23 July–21 October
2008–2009	The Family Reunion	Mary	Donmar Warehouse, 25 November 2008 – 10 January 2009
2009	Time and the Conways	Kate Conway	National Theatre Lyttelton; 28 April–27 July
2010	The Real Thing	Annie	Old Vic; 10 April–5 June
2011	Plenty	Susan Traherne	Crucible Theatre Studio, Sheffield; 8–26 February
2012	A Doll's House	Nora Helmer	Young Vic; 29 June–26 July

Radio

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2006	Trevor's World of Sport	Carrie	Guest star
2010–2011	I, Claudius	Agrippina the Elder	BBC Radio 4; 28 November 2010 – 2 January 2011
2010	The Art of Deception	Jessica Brown	BBC Radio 4; 20–24 December 2010
2012	Miss MacKenzie	Miss MacKenzie	BBC Radio 4 Extra
2013	Welcome to Our Village, Please Invade Carefully	Katrina Lyons	BBC Radio 2

External links

• Hattie Morahan at United Agents
• Hattie Morahan at the Internet Movie Database