Sophie Belinda Turner
,
Northampton, Northamptonshire, England, UK
Birthday
1996-02-21
Occupation
Actress
Spouse(s)
Years Active
2011-
Biography
Turner was born in Northampton, England on 21 February 1996, the daughter of Sally, a nursery school teacher, and Andrew, who works for a pallet distribution company. She moved to Chesterton, Warwickshire when she was 2 years old. She attended Warwick Prep School until she was 11, and later attended the independent The King's High School for Girls. Turner has been a member of the theatre company Playbox Theatre Company since she was 3 years old. She has two older brothers. Her twin died before birth.
She grew up in a large Edwardian house, near Leamington Spa, saying, "My childhood was pretty fun. We had pigsties, barns and a paddock, and used to muck around in the mud." Turner had a tutor on the set of Game of Thrones until the age of 16. She achieved five GCSE A-grades and four Bs, including in Drama.
Turner was cast as Sansa Stark, a young noblewoman, in the HBO fantasy drama series Game of Thrones in August 2009. Filming began in July 2010, when Turner was 14 years old. Sansa is Turner's first television role. Turner's drama teacher encouraged her to audition for the part, and she dyed her blonde hair auburn for the role, although in Season 7 she began wearing wigs. In 2012, she was nominated for the Young Artist Award for Best Performance in a TV Series – Supporting Young Actress for her performance as Sansa, alongside her on-screen sister, Maisie Williams. Turner appeared in all eight broadcast seasons.
In 2013, she had her first big screen role as the lead character in the independent thriller film Another Me, based on the novel of the same name by Catherine MacPhail. She starred as Adeline March in the 2013 television film The Thirteenth Tale. In 2013, she was cast in the comedy film Barely Lethal, alongside Hailee Steinfeld, which was released on 29 May 2015 in a limited release and through video on demand. Turner also narrated the audiobook version of the Lev Grossman short story "The Girl in the Mirror", which was included in the short fiction anthology Dangerous Women and was edited by George R. R. Martin. In 2014, she narrated the audiobook City of Heavenly Fire by Cassandra Clare. The same year, she was the face of the Autumn/Winter 2014 campaign of Karen Millen. Turner played mutant Jean Grey in X-Men: Apocalypse, which was released in May 2016 to mixed critical success.
During the summer 2016, she hosted the web video Powershift in partnership with the Huffington Post. In February 2017, she announced that she would reprise her role as Jean Grey in the new film X-Men: Dark Phoenix, which takes place in the early '90s and follows the events of X-Men: Apocalypse, as a part of the X-Men franchise. In the same interview she stated that production on the film would begin soon. In March 2017, she announced she had become patron of Women for Women, an organisation that supports female war survivors. In August 2017, Turner said she believed her social media following was responsible for her successful casting in an unnamed project rather than her abilities as an actress, saying, "[I]t was between me and another girl who is a far better actress than I am, far better, but I had the followers, so I got the job."
In June 2017, she began a partnership with Wella Hair, becoming its first international brand ambassador. In November 2017, Turner was cast to play Juliane Koepcke in the movie Girl Who Fell From the Sky. She will also produce the movie. In March and April 2018, she filmed the independent movie Heavy in Toronto, Canada.
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