Emily Beecham is an English actress. She is best known for her role in the Coen Brothers film Hail, Caesar!, for the AMCtelevision seriesInto the Badlands, and for the title role in the 2017 filmDaphne. In 2019, she starred in Austrian director Jessica Hausner's film Little Joe, for which she received the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival.
Early life
Beecham was born in Wythenshawe, Manchester. Her father is a British pilot and her mother is American from Arizona. She has dual British-American citizenship. In 2003, at the age of 18, she enrolled at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art for three years, graduating with BA Hons in 2006.
Career
In her final year at LAMDA, Beecham started accepting professional acting opportunities, with her first appearances occurring in the thriller Bon Voyage and in the supernatural TV seriesAfterlife. Her first feature film, Bon Voyage, was premiered that October, receiving positive notices following its showing on ITV. It won the Golden Nymph award at the June 2007Monte Carlo Television Festival. In mid-2007, she was chosen by the director Jan Dunn for the leading role in her independent film The Calling, for which she won the Best Actress Award at the London Independent Film Festival. She was a recipient of the Edinburgh International Film Festival Trailblazer Award. The film received mixed reviews, one of which commented that "newcomer Emily Beecham plays a young woman determined to take the veil and holds her own well against such stalwarts as Brenda Blethyn and Susannah York". In highlighting the impression made by Beecham, the film columnist Hannah McGill, who was the Edinburgh Festival's artistic director from 2006 to 2010, decided that she should be one of the recipients of the coveted Skillset Trailblazer Award. That same year, Beecham gave her first professional stage performance in Ian McHugh's first play, How to Curse, at the Bush Theatre in Shepherd's Bush, London, directed by the theatre's artistic director Josie Rourke. In 2011, she received the Best Actress award at the London Independent Film Festival. Beecham has appeared in numerous television series, including Agatha Christie's Marple, Tess of The D'Urbervilles and The Street. She was listed in Nylon magazine's "Young Hollywood" issue as one of 55 "Faces of the Future", with the photograph captioned "Young Hollywood London". John Rankin, Esquire magazine's veteran glamour photographer, was quoted as saying that she has "that something special, that thing you just feel about someone... she's one of the most exciting actresses out there". In 2013, Beecham starred as Caro Allingham in The Village. She starred as The Widow in the AMC martial arts action drama seriesInto the Badlands. In 2016, she had a supporting role in the Coen Brothers movie Hail, Caesar!. One year later she played the title role in Daphne. This earned her a nomination for the Best Actress award at the British Independent Film Awards
