About Maisie Williams
Margaret Constance Williams (born 15 April 1997) is an English actress. She made her professional acting debut as Arya Stark in the HBO fantasy television series Game of Thrones, for which she won the Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama, the Portal Award for Best Supporting Actress - Television and Best Young Actor, and the Saturn Award for Best Performance by a Younger Actor.
As of March 2024, she has amassed 9.6 million followers on Instagram and 422,000 subscribers on her YouTube platform.
Williams has also had a recurring role in Doctor Who as Ashildr in 2015. In addition to television, she made her feature film debut in the mystery The Falling, for which she won the London Film Critics' Circle Award for Young Performer of the Year.
Williams was born in Bristol, UK. She has always been known as "Maisie" after the character from the comic strip The Perishers. Williams is the youngest of four children; her three older siblings are James, Beth and Ted. Born to Hilary Pitt (now Frances), a former university course administrator, she grew up in Clutton, Somerset. She attended Clutton Primary School and Norton Hill School in Midsomer Norton, before moving to Bath Dance College to study Performing Arts.
Since 2011, Williams has played Arya Stark, a tomboyish young girl from a noble family, in the HBO fantasy drama television series Game of Thrones. Arya was Williams' first role in any professional capacity. She has received critical acclaim for her performance in the series. Williams continued to garner praise for her performance in the show's second season, and HBO submitted her for consideration in the Outstanding Supporting Actress category for the 2012 Primetime Emmy Awards, although she did not receive a nomination. She won the 2012 Portal Award for Best Supporting Actress - Television, and the Portal Award for Best Young Actor. At 15 years of age, Williams was the youngest actress ever to win in the Best Supporting Actress category. In March 2013, she was nominated for a Young Artist Award for Best Performance in a TV Series - Supporting Young Actress and, in November 2013, won the BBC Radio 1 Teen Award for Best British Actor. To date, she has appeared in all seven broadcast seasons.
In 2012, Williams played Loren Caleigh in the BBC series The Secret of Crickley Hall and appeared in a Funny or Die skit titled The Olympic Ticket Scalper. She also appeared in the independent films Heatstroke (2012) and Gold (2013), and the short films Corvidae (2013) and Up On The Roof (2013).
Williams also signed on to play Lorna Thompson in the Sci-Fi film We Are Monsters, which was set for a 2014 release.
In 2014, Williams portrayed Lydia in the British film The Falling, which premiered on 11 October 2014, and was released on 24 April 2015 in the UK. In December, Williams was in talks with Naughty Dog to star as Ellie in the film adaptation of the video game The Last of Us.
In January 2015, Williams appeared in one-off Channel 4 doc-drama Cyberbully, and in February she received European recognition with a Shooting Stars Award at the 65th Berlin International Film Festival.
In February 2015, Williams played the leading role in the video-clip of Oceans by the British band Seafret. The theme of this clip is also bullying.
On 30 March 2015, the BBC announced that Williams would guest star in two episodes of Doctor Who ("The Girl Who Died" and "The Woman Who Lived"). Williams later returned to the series in the first and third episodes of the three-part series finale, entitled "Face the Raven" and "Hell Bent" respectively.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Pedro Borges
Across a textured, award-winning career spanning more than a decade, Maisie Williams has established herself as a transcendent actor; and at just 23-years-old, she has emerged as a confident creative, industry leader, and activist. Her heady debut feature film The Falling in 2014, in which she starred as the spiky, mass hysteria-leading schoolgirl Lydia, saw her win the Berlin IFF Shooting Stars Award and London Film Critics' Circle Award for Young Performer of the Year. Maisie was acclaimed for striking both vulnerability and defiance as Lydia, a performance that set a precedent for the luminous, challenging parts, crossing genre and style, that Maisie would pursue and be celebrated for. Maisie's acting credits reflect her tenacity - as the acid-tongued Abbie in 2015's oddball indie comedy Gold; a riveting one-woman performance as a blackmailed teen in BAFTA-nominated docudrama Cyberbully that same year; frenetic television and web-series roles including Adult Swim sketch shows, Netflix sci-fi thriller iBoy, period drama Mary Shelley, and several animated films. Her first stage show, Lauren Gunderson's I and You in 2018, showcased her expressive and full-bodied acting technique, capturing the breadth of the teenage experience with wit and brevity to critical success. 2019's Then Came You, a coming-of-age story that stars Maisie as a terminally ill young woman, sees her walk the taut line from drama to comedy, with electric, emotional storytelling that Maisie excels in.
Spending eight seasons and nearly a decade as Game of Thrones' spit-fire tomboy turned poker-faced assassin Arya Stark, Maisie delivered a complex, ferocious character study that the world rallied behind, and for which she was Emmy-nominated. She won both the 2012 Portal Award for Best Supporting Actress in Television, and the Portal Award for Best Young Actor. At age 15, she was the youngest actress ever to win the Best Supporting Actress accolade. Now with multiple works in post-production and on imminent release in 2020 and 2021, Maisie's current roles speak to a liberated, curious perspective and will to experiment as an engaged young woman in the film and creative industries. With Two Weeks to Live, a caustic apocalyptic comedy series described as "Killing Eve on acid", Maisie flexes skills in pitch-black humor to play the acerbic daughter of Fleabag's Sian Clifford. Their chemistry is testament to Maisie's strength in character work and intimate, quick-fire scene delivery. She's also jumped into teen horror for the first time to lead another sprawling franchise, with Marvel's The New Mutants, playing the physically demanding role of the dark, conflicted superhero Wolfsbane. The newly released 90s-set psychological thriller The Owners highlights another dimension to Maisie's exciting trajectory as an actor, a haunting and riveting portrayal of a woman forced to reckon with nightmarish incidents.
As Maisie's roles reflect her ambition, so too does her work with Pint-Sized Pictures, the UK-based production company she founded in 2018. Aiming to develop regional young British talent, she is keen to bring underrepresented stories to cinemas, theatre, and television, and to give opportunities to young creatives starting out in an opaque industry. Her commitment to urgent British independent filmmaking is in her day-to-day work - Maisie has been a proponent of all-women production teams and sets for authentic, female-led stories. Pint-Sized Picture's forthcoming projects reflect this, including BAFTA Cymru winner Lowri Roberts' Stoke-set Britain's Got Chloe, which explores viral fame through bright young eyes.
In time out of the spotlight, Maisie continues to anchor herself as a vital voice that champions female empowerment, environmentalism, and diversity in the creative arts. With a lively social media presence on Instagram and Twitter - and 14 million combined followers - Maisie uses her platform to push for change. She has been a passionate activist and campaigner, acting as an ambassador for NGO WaterAid and spokesperson for Greenpeace and the Dolphin Project. Intersecting activism and her art, Maisie is working on a documentary about salmon fishing and protecting endangered whales, titled Searching for Chinook.
She's been dedicated to supporting a more circular and responsible fashion industry, collaborating with contemporary brands that focus on sustainability and fresh new design. In late 2019, Maisie teamed up with Weekday to design a double-denim outfit that marked the first use of a future-defining fabric in fashion, made from recycled cardboard and agricultural waste that can be continuously recycled. Her inventive and fearless style shines whether on the Emmys red-carpet in a custom-designed gown by JW Anderson and Reuben Selby, as the face of Cartier, on the front row of Jacquemeus, Givenchy, and Stella McCartney shows, or in conceptual and striking cover stories for Dazed, Elle, and Rolling Stone.
With ambitious acting and production credits in the near future, Maisie's career arc encompasses layered characters and stories, for indie passion projects and box office smashes alike. Her wider work reflects an activated, young creative figure, aware of the powerful position she holds, and determined to use it to uplift others. Keen to experiment with genre and form both in front of and behind the camera, the next projects are excitedly opportune.
