Product Code Database
Margaret Constance "Maisie" Williams (born 15 April 1997) is an English actress. Williams made her acting debut in 2011 as Arya Stark, a lead character in the HBO epic medieval fantasy television series Game of Thrones (2011–2019). She gained recognition and critical praise for her work on the show, and received two Emmy Award nominations. Williams' other television appearances include Ashildr in the BBC science fiction series Doctor Who (2015), starring in the British docudrama television film Cyberbully (2015), and in the British science-fiction teen thriller film iBoy (2017). She played the central character in the comedy action drama miniseries Two Weeks to Live (2020), and portrayed punk rock icon Pamela Rooke in Pistol (2022), a biopic about the Sex Pistols. Williams also voiced Cammie MacCloud in the American animated web series (2019–2021).
In 2014, she starred as Lydia in her first feature film, the coming-of-age mystery drama The Falling, for which she received critical acclaim and several awards. She co-starred in films such as the romantic historical drama film Mary Shelley (2017), the animated historical film sports comedy film Early Man (2018), and the romantic comedy-drama film Then Came You (2018). In 2018, she made her stage debut in Lauren Gunderson's play I and You at the Hampstead Theatre in London, to positive reviews. In 2020, she starred in the superhero horror film The New Mutants and the psychological thriller The Owners.
In 2019, Williams jointly developed and launched the social media platform Daisie, a multi-media networking app designed to be an alternative means to help artists and creators (especially those who are trying to get started) in their careers.
Williams went to Clutton Primary School and Norton Hill School in Midsomer Norton. She later transferred to Bath Dance College to study performing arts, where she trained in musical theatre, ballet, pointe, Tap dance, Street dance, freestyle, gymnastics and trampolining, with the ambition of becoming a professional dancer. She left school at 14 years old partly due to the successful start of her acting career. She was then home educated, but did not take any GCSEs.
The character of Arya Stark is regarded as an anti heroine, a fan favourite that developed into one of the central protagonists in the Game of Thrones fantasy epic. The character's story arc across the first six seasons encompasses severance, trauma, tragedy and revenge. The physical role required a young actor who could portray a deadly assassin. Williams, who is naturally right-handed but kept in character by performing left handed in the show, did the majority of her own stunts and fight scenes in the series. She was told a year before the filming of "The Long Night" to build up her stamina for the episode. Her performance in that episode was nominated for the 2020 BAFTA TV Awards under the "Must-see moment" category. Williams appeared in all eight broadcast seasons of Game of Thrones, the final episode of which aired in May 2019.
Williams has said that while she looks back at her role as Arya with pride and affection she did not miss that period of her personal life. Arya was not only younger than Williams was, but the role demanded that she was made to look boyish with short hair and make up, plus a strap across her chest that made Williams feel ashamed during her mid teen years as her feminine body developed. The character did not match who she was becoming in reality nor did Arya resemble what Williams believed to be attractive, and at the same time she resented her own body for not matching with that of her character's.
In 2014, Williams played the lead role of Lydia in the British melodramatic coming of age mystery drama film The Falling, set in an all-girls school, for which she was awarded the London Film Critics' Circle Award for Young Performer of the Year, Evening Standard British Film Award Rising Star and the European Shooting Stars Award at the 65th Berlin International Film Festival for her role in Carol Morley's feature. The film premiered at the BFI London Film Festival on 11 October 2014, and was released theatrically on 24 April 2015 in the UK. Guy Lodge of Variety described Williams as "prodigiously gifted" and giving a "brilliantly articulated ... bristling, often spikily funny performance." In 2014, she also played Abbie in the Irish comedy-drama film Gold.
In January 2015, Williams (a victim of cyberbullying herself) starred as Casey Jacobs in the one-hour-long BAFTA nominated Cyberbully, a Channel 4 docudrama television film.Management Association, Information Resources (2019). 9781522579106, IGI Global. . ISBN 9781522579106 Writing for The Guardian, Filipa Jodelka described Williams' central, almost solo, performance as a "tour-de-force". In 2015, Williams guest starred in four episodes of series 9 of the BBC science fiction series Doctor Who ("The Girl Who Died", "The Woman Who Lived", "Face the Raven" and "Hell Bent"), in the recurring role of Ashildr, a Viking girl made immortal by the Doctor. Williams' performance in "The Woman Who Lived" was described as "superb" by Patrick Mulkern of the Radio Times.
In 2018, she voice actor the character Goona, a Bronze Age fearless rebel tomboy football enthusiast in Nick Park's animated prehistoric comedy sports film Early Man which also featured Eddie Redmayne and Tom Hiddleston, though both Gwilym Mumford of The Guardian and Kate Stables of the British Film Institute noted that Williams' accent varied during the film. From 18 October to 24 November 2018, Williams starred as Caroline in the stage play I and You, which was written by Lauren Gunderson. The play premiered at the Hampstead Theatre in London. The play did well at the box office and Williams' stage performance was regarded a critical success, with the production later being broadcast free on Instagram from 30 November to 3 December 2018 and again during the last week of March 2020. She also starred in the eleven-minute short film Corvidae, a dark fairy tale filmed in 2013 and released in 2018, of which Craig Holton of flickfeast commented that Williams brought "an undeniably ethereal quality to this short film, helping it make the leap from grounded realism to eldritch bucolic fantasy".
In 2019, Williams starred alongside Asa Butterfield and Nina Dobrev in the coming of age romantic comedy-drama film Then Came You, in which she played a teenager with a terminal illness. Frank Scheck of the Hollywood Reporter felt that Williams made her "sprightly character appealingly vulnerable". The film premiered at the Woodstock Film Festival on 12 October 2018 and was released nationwide in 2019. From 2019 to 2021 Williams has voiced the role Cammie MacCloud, a mischievous Scottish hacker, in the U.S. animated web series that is set in a dystopian future, which is broadcast on the Rooster Teeth subscription service. On 4 November 2021, the second season of nine episodes premiered on HBO Max first before it is released on Rooster Teeth three months later.
Released in September 2020, Williams was the lead in Two Weeks to Live, a six-part dark, deadpan comedy revenge drama. Williams plays Kim Noakes, who (following the murder of her father) has been raised in total isolation, living off the grid in the wilderness, by her overprotective doomsday prepping badass survivalist mother, Tina (played by Sian Clifford). Action is set in motion following a seemingly harmless prank played on Kim of a fake video that makes her believe that everybody in the world has just two weeks to live. Kim – raised to believe the end times were close – sets off to kill the man who murdered her father in front of her when she was a child. The Guardian considers that Williams "excels in her fish-out-of-water role, flitting between hapless and determined, worldly and childlike". Two Weeks To Live lets Williams flex comedy muscles while also showing off her stunt fighting and stunt skills. The NME described the action drama as also genuinely funny. The UK series, written by Gaby Hull and produced by Kudos for Sky UK, debuted on 2 September 2020, and premiered in the U.S. on HBO Max on 5 November. The six part first series also starred Sean Knopp, Mawaan Rizwan and Taheen Modak.
Also in September, Williams starred in the 1990s-set psychological thriller The Owners, in which she played Mary, a young woman who reluctantly agrees to participate in a botched robbery with her boyfriend and two other young low level criminals (Ian Kenny, Jake Curran and Andrew Ellis) of an old couple's home (Sylvester McCoy and Rita Tushingham). The Hollywood Reporter, while praising McCoy and Tushingham more, felt that Williams 'used her innate appeal to make her character sympathetic'. Dread Central felt that she gave better performance than she did in New Mutants and commented "it's undeniably cool to see the young, now forever iconic actress kick ass in a real world setting". The film was released by RLJE Films at select theatres, and digital on demand on 4 September. The film was directed by French director Julius Berg and adapted from the graphic novel Une Nuit De Pleine Lune by Belgian artist Hermann and writer Yves H. Her veteran co-actor Sylvester McCoy predicted success for Williams beyond acting "she's full of energy – a little bubbly ball of fire and creativity... she's grown up in the business and she knows it inside out... She's a rising star as an actress, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if she became a director and a producer... She's got all those abilities and that intelligence and the knowledge of the business from years of doing it... from a young age."
In April 2021, H&M announced Williams as its global sustainability ambassador. This followed H&M's announcement in December that its foundation will be spending $100 million (£72 million) on green initiatives. The aim was to promote the brands move to a circular fashion model where customers recycle unwanted garments, resulting in less waste and lower environmental impact H&M. However, Williams and H&M received a backlash from some sustainability activists and fair fashion campaigners, accusing both of greenwashing. The fast-fashion brand recycling initiative was criticised for not going far enough, for not using sustainable materials from the outset, for perceived poor treatment of its workers and failure to meet the Living Wage targets they set themselves. The company strongly defended itself. Williams was criticised for lending her celebrity name and financially benefiting from the corporate partnership.
Williams and Lowri Roberts, via their production company Rapt, teamed up with independent studio Delaval Film as executive producers on a 15-minute British/Czech co-produced stop motion animation short, Salvation Has No Name. Written and directed by Joseph Wallace, filming began in 2020 at Aardman Studios, and is set to be screened at festivals in 2022. Salvation Has No Name, to be screened at festivals in 2022, is a cinematic folktale that explores the issue of xenophobia and faith around the refugee crisis through a surreal performance of a troupe of circus clowns.
Users can search for creative projects, and network with other users in the fields they are interested in. Users' profiles grow by connecting with other creative people (via "chains") and working collaboratively on projects (not by obtaining high follower popularity counts, friends, or likes typical of most other social media apps). Williams explains: "The way your profile grows is by the chains that you make. To make a chain with someone, you have to work together." Creative users can use Daisie to showcase their own work or their collaborations in the same or multiple arts industries. They can also gain guidance from leading experts in their field via a question and answer style format with others who have more experience in their fields.
Williams and Santry said that they designed Daisie as a tool for young people to bypass the obstacles, both internal and external, that prevent budding artists from gaining recognition and exposure. Williams stated that the "goal is to have a community of artists who are collaborating with each other, uploading their work, sharing their projects and ultimately ... help people with their own careers, rather than our own." Daisie does not allow company profiles, the focus being on individual creators. Williams explained in 2019 that instead of creators "having to market themselves to fit someone else's idea of what their job would be, they can let their art speak for themselves."
In 2019, Williams presented a TEDx talk in Manchester on the topic "Don't strive to be famous, strive to be talented". She ended the talk by introducing Daisie as a social network tool for artists to collaborate with each other, and as a way for artists to take back control.
Williams is also the Creative Strategist and advisor to a platform called Contact (launched in October 2020) which was co-founded by Williams' partner Reuben Selby, who was formerly part of her Daisie team. Initially targeted at connecting agencies and fashion models (including support features including licensing and insurance). Following successful fundraising ($1.9 million (£1.4 million) seed funding), the intention is to expand into other creative fields such as photographers, stylists, videographers, and more. Contact offers an alternative approach to working in the creative industries which is currently dominated by agencies. Via Contact, individuals and businesses can discover and book creators and creative services directly, circumventing the need for an agency.
In 2021, Williams started a podcast, Frank Film Club, with filmmaker Lowri Roberts and casting director Hannah Marie Williams, with each episode discussing and reviewing a film they had recently watched.
Williams (in collaboration with a designer from Daisie), along with Zoe Sugg and activist Adwoa Aboah, designed a limited-edition Menstruation bag for WaterAid's non profit monthly subscription service Fempowered. Sales of the bags are intended to tackle taboos regarding periods while also raising money to tackle international inequalities of period poverty.
In April 2021, Williams was appointed the World Wildlife Fund's (WWF) first global ambassador for climate and nature. At the eve of COP26 November 2021, Williams (as the WWF Global Ambassador) delivered the opening address at the premiere of Sir David Attenborough's upcoming television series The Green Planet at Glasgow's Imax cinema.
| +Key | Denotes projects that have not yet been released. |
| Heatstroke | |||
| Millie Pearlman | |||
| Mary Shelley | |||
| Corvidae | Jay | Short film | |
| Early Man | Goona (voice) | ||
| Then Came You | Skye Aitken | ||
| The Owners | Mary | ||
| Didi Pickles / Bee Cosplayer (voices) | Episode: "Link's Sausages" | |
| "Sing" | Pentatonix | Herself | ||
| "Rest Your Love" | The Vamps | Layla | ||
| "You Mean the World to Me" | Freya Ridings | Daughter | Directed by fellow Game of Thrones actress Lena Headey | |
| + ! Year ! Award ! Category ! Work ! Result ! class="unsortable" | |||||
| Airlock Alpha | Best Young Actor | Game of Thrones | |||
| Scream Awards | Shared ~ Best Ensemble | ||||
| SFX Awards | Best Actress | ||||
| Airlock Alpha | Best Supporting Actress | ||||
| Best Young Actor | |||||
| Screen Actors Guild Award | Shared ~ Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series | ||||
| Young Artist Award | Best Performance in a TV Series – Supporting Young Actress | ||||
| BBC Radio 1 Teen Award | Best British Actress | Herself | |||
| Screen Actors Guild Award | Shared ~ Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series | Game of Thrones | |||
| EWwy Award | Best Supporting Actress, Drama | ||||
| SFX Awards | Best Actress | ||||
| Screen Actors Guild Award | Shared ~ Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series | – | |||
| Empire Award | Empire Hero Award | ||||
| EWwy Award | Best Supporting Actress, Drama | ||||
| Berlin International Film Festival | Shooting Stars Award | The Falling | |||
| Saturn Award | Best Performance by a Young Actor in a Television Series | Game of Thrones | |||
| Shorty Award | Favorite Actress | Herself | |||
| London Film Critics' Circle Award | Young British/Irish Performer of the Year | The Falling | |||
| Evening Standard British Film Award | Rising Star | ||||
| Screen Actors Guild Award | Shared ~ Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series | Game of Thrones | |||
| Saturn Award | Best Performance by a Young Actor in a Television Series | ||||
| Primetime Emmy Award | Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series | ||||
| Screen Actors Guild Award | Shared ~ Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series | ||||
| Screen Actors Guild Award | Shared ~ Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series | ||||
| MTV Movie & TV Awards | Best Performance in a Show | ||||
| Primetime Emmy Awards | Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series | ||||
| MTV Movie & TV Awards | Best Hero | ||||
| Best Fight | |||||
| Saturn Award | Best Performance by a Young Actor in a Television Series | ||||
| People's Choice Awards | The Female TV Star | ||||
| The Drama TV Star |
|
|
