Rachael Stirling

Rachael Stirling is an English stage, film and television actress. She is a two-time Olivier nominee for her stage work. She played Nancy Astley in the BBC drama Tipping the Velvet, and Millie in the ITV series The Bletchley Circle.

Personal life

Stirling is the daughter of actress Diana Rigg and theatre producer Archibald Stirling. Her parents subsequently married in 1982 and divorced in 1990. Through her father, she has a long line of ancestry from the Scottish parish of Lecropt, near her namesake city of Stirling.

Stirling attended Wycombe Abbey School. She earned a BA in art history from Edinburgh University, where she performed with the Edinburgh University Theatre Company.

Stirling can speak Russian and is experienced in horse riding and jumping.

She was engaged to fellow actor Oliver Chris, whom she had been dating since 2007, until 2012.

Theatre

Stirling made her first major appearance on stage in 1996 as Desdemona in the National Youth Theatre revival of Othello at the Arts Theatre opposite Chiwetel Ejiofor in the title role. A year later, again at the Arts Theatre with the NYT, she played Olive in the female version of The Odd Couple; while in 1998, portraying Kate in Dancing at Lughnasa for NYT at the Arts, she gave what The Stage reviewer described as "a performance of exceptional promise and authority".

She continues to be active in the theatre, covering a diversity of roles in plays such as Dusty Hughes' Helpless (Donmar Warehouse, 2000); A Woman of No Importance (Theatre Royal Haymarket, 2003); Anna in the Tropics (Hampstead Theatre, 2004); and Tamburlaine (Bristol Old Vic and Barbican, 2005), and she followed in her mother's footsteps, bringing an alluring erotic charge to her performance as Miranda Lionheart in the National Theatre stage version of Theatre of Blood (2005).

In 2006, for the Peter Hall Company at the Theatre Royal, Bath, she played Helena in Peter Gill's revival of Look Back in Anger, while in 2007 at Wilton's Music Hall in London, she starred as Yelena in David Mamet's version of Uncle Vanya, and as Katharina in The Taming of the Shrew.

Stirling starred onstage in The Priory directed by Jeremy Herrin at the Royal Court Theatre in 2009. Her role as Rebecca earned her a nomination for Laurence Olivier Award for Best Performance in a Supporting Role. In 2010 she appeared as Helena in Peter Hall's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Rose Theatre, Kingston.

She starred as Lady Chiltern in a 2010 production of An Ideal Husband at the Vaudeville Theatre, for which she received her second nomination for a Laurence Olivier Award. From February to April 2012, she appeared as Sylvia alongside Mark Gatiss, Tobias Menzies, and Nancy Carroll in The Recruiting Officer, the acclaimed production at the Donmar Warehouse directed by newly appointed artistic director Josie Rourke.

Film

Stirling's first screen appearance was in the 1998 British comedy film Still Crazy.

Other film appearances include Maybe Baby, Redemption Road (2001), Complicity (with her Tipping the Velvet co-star Keeley Hawes), Another Life (with Vanity Fair actress Natasha Little), The Triumph of Love (with Mira Sorvino), as Mary Jones in Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and as Anna in Snow White and the Huntsman.

Television

Stirling's first break in television was in the 2000 NBC miniseries In the Beginning, which was adapted from Genesis. Stirling played the young Rebeccah, with her mother, Diana Rigg, as the older Rebeccah.

In 2011, she starred in the BBC Four adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love as Ursula Brangwen.

She appeared in an episode of Doctor Who titled "The Crimson Horror" alongside her mother Dame Diana Rigg, Matt Smith and Jenna-Louise Coleman. The episode had been specially written for her and her mother by Mark Gatiss (marking the very first appearance of the two actresses together professionally) and was aired 4 May 2013 as part of Series 7.

She appeared as a guest on the BBC1 cookery programme Saturday Kitchen Live which was broadcast on 1 March 2014.

In autumn 2014 she appeared in the BBC4 comedy drama Detectorists as Becky, the girlfriend of Andy (played by Mackenzie Crook).

Other work

Stirling is an occasional interviewer on the Radio Four chat-show Loose Ends. She also wrote a restaurant column for Diplomat magazine.

She took part in Occupy London's reading of Dickens' A Christmas Carol on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral, London in December 2011.

Presented Stage Door, BBC Radio Four, December 2012.

Biography from the wikipedia article, licensed under CC-BY-SA