Jodie Comer

Jodie Comer (pronounced KOH-mər) is an English actress born on 11 March 1993 in Liverpool, England. Her accolades span both stage and screen and include two British Academy Television Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, a Tony Award, a Laurence Olivier Award, and two Golden Globe Award nominations.

Comer was raised in Liverpool's Childwall suburb, the daughter of Donna, an employee of Merseyrail, and Jimmy Comer, a physiotherapist for Everton. She has a younger brother, Charlie, born in 1995. She attended St Julie's Catholic High School in the neighboring Woolton suburb, where she became close friends with future Olympic athlete Katarina Johnson-Thompson. At age eleven, she began studying acting at a weekend drama school called CALS in the Belle Vale area of Liverpool. Through that program, she entered the Liverpool Performing Arts Festival in 2006 at St George's Hall, placing first in her category with a monologue about the Hillsborough disaster. That same monologue, performed in a high school talent show after she was removed from a friend's dance group, prompted her drama teacher to arrange an audition for a BBC Radio 4 play, which became her first professional acting job.

Her screen career began in 2008 with a guest appearance on The Royal Today. She made her theatre debut in 2010 in The Price of Everything, directed by Noreen Kershaw at the Stephen Joseph Theatre. A series of television roles followed, including leading parts in the drama series Justice (2011) and the supernatural miniseries Remember Me (2014), as well as the role of Chloe Gemell in the E4 comedy-drama My Mad Fat Diary (2013–2015). She appeared in the BBC One television film adaptation of Lady Chatterley's Lover in 2015 and that same year took on the role of Kate Parks in the BBC One drama Doctor Foster (2015–2017). Her first starring role came in 2016 when she played Ivy Moxam in the BBC Three miniseries Thirteen, earning a nomination for the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress. Also in 2016, she appeared as Beryl Evans in the BBC One miniseries Rillington Place and was named one of Screen International's Stars of Tomorrow. In 2017, she starred as a young Elizabeth of York in the Starz series The White Princess and made her feature film debut as Christine in the Morrissey biographical drama England Is Mine, directed by Mark Gill.

Comer achieved widespread recognition beginning in April 2018 when she began starring as Villanelle, a sociopathic Russian assassin, in the BBC America spy thriller Killing Eve, opposite Sandra Oh. The role ran through 2022 and earned her three nominations each for the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress and the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, winning both in 2019. In June 2020, she played the lead role of Lesley in a BBC iPlayer reboot of the Talking Heads episode "Her Big Chance." In 2021, she appeared in the action comedy Free Guy alongside Ryan Reynolds, playing both Millie, a games developer, and her in-game avatar Molotov Girl, and she co-starred with Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Adam Driver in Ridley Scott's historical drama The Last Duel, portraying Marguerite de Carrouges. That same year she starred in the Channel 4 drama Help, playing a young care home worker during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, also serving as an executive producer on the project. The performance earned her a British Academy Television Award for Best Actress.

Comer made her West End debut in April 2022 in Suzie Miller's one-woman play Prima Facie at the Harold Pinter Theatre, where she played criminal defense barrister Tessa Ensler. The production ran through June 2022, and a filmed performance captured at the Harold Pinter Theatre was subsequently released through National Theatre Live, becoming the highest-grossing event cinema release ever with earnings of £4.47 million. For the West End run, she received the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress. The production transferred to Broadway in spring 2023, marking Comer's Broadway debut. Her performance earned her the Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Solo Performance, and a Theatre World Award, all in 2023.

Her film work has continued with appearances in The Bikeriders (2023), the environmental thriller The End We Start From (2023), and the horror film 28 Years Later (2025).