{"id":375983,"date":"2026-04-12T14:04:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T14:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/375983\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T14:04:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T14:04:07","slug":"charlotte-riley-the-girl-in-the-photo-would-be-thrilled-im-an-actor-charlotte-riley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/375983\/","title":{"rendered":"Charlotte Riley: \u2018The girl in the photo would be thrilled I\u2019m an actor\u2019 | Charlotte Riley"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charlotte Riley recreating a childhood photo from 1987<\/a>Charlotte Riley in 1987 and 2026. Later photograph: P\u00e5l Hansen\/The Guardian. Styling: Andie Redman. Hair and makeup: Wendy Turner. Archive photograph: courtesy of Charlotte Riley<\/p>\n

Born in Grindon, County\u00a0Durham, in 1981, Charlotte Riley is an actor and writer. She studied English at Durham University before training at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (Lamda). Riley first came to prominence with her portrayal of Cathy in Wuthering Heights in 2009, and has since appeared in series such as Peaky Blinders and Press, as well as on stage. In 2017, she founded The WonderWorks<\/a>, a network of childcare support options for people involved in the TV and film industry. She has two children and a\u00a0stepson with her husband, the actor Tom Hardy. Riley stars in the BBC\u2019s new series Babies, Trying on\u00a0Apple TV+ and the forthcoming Tomb Raider Amazon series.<\/p>\n

I was always described as cheeky and\u00a0smiley as a kid, and this photo of me in my dad\u2019s office in Teesside proves exactly that. It was my first time going to work with him, so I\u00a0wanted to wear a jumper that was just like the one he usually wore. I\u00a0have vivid memories of the room smelling of drip\u00a0coffee, and I know that I was happy, even though it was a\u00a0super boring place to be.<\/p>\n

I spent a lot of time there, and was mostly left to my own devices. I was allowed to raid the stationery cupboard and would make artwork out of whatever I could find \u2013 Dad was a fitter for Imperial Chemical Industries and ran an engineering company, so there was a lot of art made out of filtration components. When I was around nine, he would put\u00a0me to work \u2013 if I wasn\u2019t clearing out a cupboard, I was making calls to\u00a0clients. I was never scared, because he treated me as if I was competent and had the ability to do anything. He\u00a0instilled this idea of, \u201cWhat\u2019s the worst that could happen? You might be shit at it. And what?\u201d I was taught to\u00a0fail well \u2013 and enjoy failing.<\/p>\n

My family are all creative in some way\u00a0\u2013 Mum used to make curtains and\u00a0was amazing in the garden, and\u00a0Dad used to manage a band. Me\u00a0and my two older siblings would go on long car journeys with Dad, who would put Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, the Beatles and Led Zeppelin on the car stereo. He\u2019d press pause and say, \u201cDid you hear that lyric?\u201d Grindon might have been lacking in cultural capital in the 80s and 90s, but I formed a healthy appreciation for the arts through Dad\u2019s passion for music.<\/p>\n

double quotation markI remember pretending to be a piece of bacon. The teacher would say, \u2018You\u2019re flaccid, not cooked \u2026 Now you\u2019re sizzling!\u2019<\/p>\n

When I was 10, my parents scrimped and saved and managed to\u00a0get me a\u00a0scholarship to a\u00a0girls\u2019 school. I was really behind academically and felt out of place. Then the auditions for the school play came up and I got the\u00a0part of Captain Hook. People found me funny\u00a0in rehearsals and I started to\u00a0think, \u201cThis\u00a0might be something that I\u2019m\u00a0actually OK at.\u201d When I\u00a0turned up on stage in front of\u00a0an audience, dressed as a pirate, I\u00a0could see my family dying laughing. They didn\u2019t know what to do with themselves. It\u00a0gave me an out-of-body sensation that I\u2019d never experienced before, and\u00a0I wanted that sense of flow\u00a0and\u00a0joy\u00a0again.<\/p>\n

All I cared about as a teenager was going to see live music. I\u2019d save up my\u00a0 money from my pub job and go and see bands like Fun Lovin\u2019 Criminals or Terrorvision. My parents gave me a lot of rope, so I never pushed back against them. I was allowed to get on a coach from Teesside to Loch Lomond when I was 13 to go and see Oasis, which seems absurd now. But I knew that if I\u00a0rebelled too much, stayed out too late or drank too much, then they wouldn\u2019t be so generous with my freedom.<\/p>\n

One of the big turning points in my life was joining the comedy group, Durham Revue. It was essentially 10 people in a room dicking around, coming up with really questionable sketches, none of which are repeatable. Lamda was equally brilliant and ridiculous. I have memories of having to pretend to be a piece of bacon. The teacher would say, \u201cYou\u2019re flaccid bacon. You\u2019re not cooked yet. And now you\u2019re sizzling. Oh, it\u2019s heating up. You\u2019re sizzling in\u00a0a\u00a0pan!\u201d I would go along with it, but\u00a0was always thinking, \u201cIf my parents could see me now \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

I assumed when I left drama school that I would be auditioning for characters that were northern. Instead, I\u00a0was getting characters with more RP\u00a0accents, and, as I was a young woman, lots of ingenues. That being said, I did get the part of Cathy in Wuthering Heights, a role I felt prepared for because I had walked the moors and I\u2019d been to all those villages. Tom [Hardy] played Heathcliff. The first time we met was in rehearsals, somewhere in Ealing. I was going through the scenes with him and realised we had great rapport and banter, so it was fun. But the really\u00a0important thing, and the greatest test of character even though it sounds trivial, was that he\u00a0made me\u00a0a really cracking cup of tea \u2013 99%\u00a0of people cannot make tea, but\u00a0Tom\u2019s mother is from Ripon, so\u00a0it\u00a0was amazing. I thought, \u201cWell, this is all going to be fine then.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I played Kate Middleton in King\u00a0Charles III, I had my baby with me. All my memories of that job are about trying to figure out how to be\u00a0both a mother and an actor at the\u00a0same time. That\u2019s where the idea\u00a0for The WonderWorks began. I\u00a0was on the call sheet, so they had to\u00a0make adjustments for me \u2013 I had space to pump, somewhere to store milk, and they gently worked the day around it. But when I spoke to crew members, it\u00a0was clear that kind of support didn\u2019t exist for them, even though it would help them just as much. I\u2019d hear stories of people pumping in toilets or struggling to make it to work at all. In\u00a0the end, I\u00a0stepped away from acting for five years to be with my kids, and to set\u00a0up\u00a0the company. Was I worried about my career? My granny always said, \u201cWhat\u2019s for you won\u2019t go by you.\u201d I live by that mantra every day.<\/p>\n

I love being an actor, but I love living my life more. I\u2019ve learned that work is one long escalator with a carrot dangling at the top of it. If you get to the top, there\u2019s just another fucking carrot and another fucking escalator, and you\u2019ve ignored everything else in\u00a0the pursuit of moving forward. Bigger and flashier doesn\u2019t always mean better. I wrote two plays in my\u00a020s, and those experiences were so nourishing creatively for me that it gave me a compass for how I approach all of my decision-making. I always ask, \u201cDoes this feel right? Does it help me grow?\u201d, rather than, \u201cWhere will this take me next, professionally?\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of my favourite moments of\u00a0creativity now come when my kids are finished painting and they\u2019ve scattered off and nobody is watching or cares, and I get stuck into the leftover paint and make something just for me. Because all I ever wanted as a kid was to take things from inside my head and\u00a0put them out into the world.<\/p>\n

If the girl in the photo met the 44-year-old me, she\u2019d be thrilled that I\u2019m an actor. But nothing too over the top, because she\u2019s already pretty pleased with herself. After all, what\u2019s more fun than spending the day with Dad in a tiny office in Teesside?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charlotte Riley recreating a childhood photo from 1987Charlotte Riley in 1987 and 2026. Later photograph: P\u00e5l Hansen\/The Guardian.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":375984,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-375983","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}