Eve Best

Eve Best, born Emily Frances Finlay Best on 31 July 1971 in Hammersmith, London, is an English actress and director who has worked extensively across stage, television, and film. She grew up in Ladbroke Grove, London, the daughter of Alastair Finlay Best, a design journalist, and Susanna Joan Best, a theatre director who founded a company called Shakespeare Link to promote the works of Shakespeare. Best has a younger sister, Joscelyn Elizabeth, born in 1973. Her earliest performing experience came at age nine with the W11 Opera children's opera company in London. She attended Wycombe Abbey Girls' School before studying English at Lincoln College, Oxford, where she participated in Oxford University Dramatic Society productions and performed at the Edinburgh Festival. Following her Oxford graduation, she made her professional stage debut playing Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing at the Southwark Playhouse. She subsequently trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, graduating in 1999. Because an Emily Best was already registered with British Actors' Equity Association, she adopted her grandmother's name as her stage name.

After graduating from RADA, Best appeared in a revival of 'Tis Pity She's a Whore at the Young Vic, earning both the Evening Standard and Critics' Circle best newcomer awards. Her career advanced significantly when she won the 2006 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress for playing the title role in Hedda Gabler. She received a second Olivier nomination the following year for her performance as Josie in Eugene O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten at the Old Vic Theatre in London. In early 2007, she appeared in a Sheffield Crucible production of As You Like It, which also played at the RSC's Swan Theatre in Stratford as part of their Complete Works season.

Best made her Broadway debut in 2007 in the revival of A Moon for the Misbegotten, for which she received the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play, a Theatre World Award, and her first Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a Play. The following year, she appeared in Harold Pinter's The Homecoming at the Cort Theatre in New York, a production directed by Daniel Sullivan that co-starred Ian McShane, Raúl Esparza, and Michael McKean and ran for a twenty-week limited engagement, closing on 13 April 2008. That production earned her a second Tony nomination for Best Actress in a Play, as well as a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Ensemble Performance. She returned to Broadway in 2015 in the revival of Pinter's Old Times, appearing opposite Clive Owen and Kelly Reilly.

Outside of her Broadway work, Best reprised the role of Beatrice in a production of Much Ado About Nothing at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in 2011, playing opposite Charles Edwards as Benedick. In 2012 she starred in the Old Vic production of The Duchess of Malfi, and in 2013 she made her directorial debut with a production of Macbeth at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. In the summer of 2014, she played Cleopatra in Shakespeare's Globe's production of Antony and Cleopatra.

On television, Best is known for playing Dr. Eleanor O'Hara in the Showtime series Nurse Jackie, a role she held from 2009 to 2015. She portrayed First Lady Dolley Madison in the 2011 American Experience television special and Monica Chatwin in the 2014 BBC miniseries The Honourable Woman. She went on to play Princess Rhaenys Targaryen in HBO's House of the Dragon from 2022 to 2024. Earlier television credits include Prime Suspect: The Final Act (2006), The Inspector Lynley Mysteries (2005), Waking the Dead (2004), and Shackleton (2002). She also co-starred as Sally Ride alongside William Hurt in The Challenger Disaster, a British television dramatization of the Rogers Commission investigation into the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. In 2023, she appeared in the ITV1 series Maryland, playing Rosaline, a woman reuniting with her sister after their mother's body is discovered on the Isle of Man.

In film, Best played Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, in the 2010 feature The King's Speech, which starred Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush. She has also appeared in audio productions, including the role of Lucrece in the Naxos audiobook of Shakespeare's The Rape of Lucrece and a 2000 BBC Radio 4 production of Emma.