Bel Powley

Isobel Dorothy Powley Booth, known professionally as Bel Powley, was born on 7 March 1992 in the Hammersmith borough of London, England. The daughter of British actor Mark Powley and casting director Janis Jaffa, Powley was raised in London and attended Holland Park School. Her mother is descended from Jewish immigrants who traveled from the Russian Empire to Little Jerusalem in Dublin, Ireland.

Powley began her acting career as a teenager, taking on a lead role in the CBBC action series M.I. High, appearing in 23 episodes between 2007 and 2008. Additional early television work included The Whistleblowers (2007), Little Dorrit (2008), The Bill (2008), and Murderland (2009). Her stage career began in March 2009 when she played Maggie in Tusk Tusk at the Royal Court Theatre in London. She returned to the Royal Court in October 2011 to play Tilly in Jumpy, a role she reprised in the West End transfer to the Duke of York's Theatre in August 2012.

Powley made her Broadway debut in 2011, playing Thomasina in the revival of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. She returned to Broadway in March 2018 in a revival of Kenneth Lonergan's Lobby Hero at the Hayes Theatre, where she played Dawn alongside Chris Evans, Michael Cera, and Bryan Tyree Henry.

Her film career gained significant momentum in 2015. She portrayed Princess Margaret in the biographical comedy-drama A Royal Night Out, earning a nomination for the British Independent Film Award for Most Promising Newcomer. That same year, she played the lead role of Minnie Goetze in The Diary of a Teenage Girl, which premiered in New York City and Los Angeles in August 2015. The performance brought her a nomination for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead and the Trophée Chopard at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. Subsequent film credits include Carrie Pilby (2016), Mary Shelley (2017), Ashes in the Snow (2018), Wildling (2018) opposite Liv Tyler, White Boy Rick (2018), and The King of Staten Island (2020).

On television, Powley appeared in the BBC One drama Informer (2018), playing lead character Holly Morten, and in the Apple TV+ series The Morning Show from 2019 to 2021. In 2022 she played Birdy in the BBC series Everything I Know About Love. Her most acclaimed television work came with the National Geographic miniseries A Small Light (2023), in which she starred as Miep Gies. The performance earned her nominations for both a Critics' Choice Television Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She subsequently appeared in Masters of the Air (2024).

In her personal life, Powley had been accepted to study history at the University of Manchester and also deferred a place at University College London multiple times in order to pursue acting. She met actor Douglas Booth on the set of Mary Shelley in 2016, and their engagement was announced in July 2021. The two married on 28 October 2023 at Petersham Nurseries in Richmond, with an afterparty held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. The ceremony took place under a chuppah crafted by Booth's sister to honor Powley's Jewish heritage.