Freya Mavor

Freya Mavor (born 13 August 1993) is a Scottish actress and model. She is best known for playing Mini McGuinness in the E4 teen drama Skins.

Freya Mavor
Mavor in January 2016.
Born	(1993-08-13) 13 August 1993 Glasgow, Scotland
Education	Mary Erskine School
Occupation	Actress model
Years active	2011–present
Relatives	James Bridie (great-grandfather)

Early life

Mavor was born in Glasgow, but grew up in Inverleith, Edinburgh.[1] Her father, James Mavor, is an award-winning playwright who leads the MA screenwriting course at Napier University. Her grandfather, named Ronald Bingo Mavor, was The Scotsman's theatre critic in the early 1960s before he became the director of the Scottish Arts Council.[2] Her great-grandfather, James Bridie (real name Osborne Mavor), changed the Scottish theatrical landscape by setting up in 1950 a college of drama, the forerunner of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.[3] Mavor's mother is Irish and also has some Danish ancestry.

Mavor first became interested in acting after watching The Shining when she was 10 years old.[1] For a period, she lived in La Rochelle, France.[4] She studied at Collège Eugène Fromentin in La Rochelle and at Mary Erskine School in Edinburgh,[5] and has been a member of the National Youth Theatre since 2008.[6] Her first acting experience was in school productions of Shakespeare’s The Tempest as Miranda[5] and in The Merchant of Venice, directed by John C. Allan, prior to a stint in the National Youth Theatre.[3][6]

Career

In 2011, Mavor made her professional debut as Mini McGuinness in the fifth and sixth series of E4 drama Skins. She described her character as "quite a feisty and witty figure, but she doesn't really think about the consequences of her actions".[7] For her role, she was nominated for Best Actress at the TV Choice Awards 2012.[8]

Mavor became the face of Pringle of Scotland for its 2011 spring/summer campaign.[9] She also won the Fashion Icon of the Year Award at the 2011 Scottish Fashion Awards.[10]

In 2013, Mavor played Nicola Ball in the romantic comedy Not Another Happy Ending. It was first screened at the 2013 EIFF Closing Night. The film is about a writer suffering from writer's block and her publisher’s campaign to get her writing again.[11] In the same year, she appeared as Liz in Sunshine on Leith, an adaptation of the stage musical based on the lyrics of The Proclaimers, first screened at TIFF 2013.[12] In 2015, she starred in Joann Sfar's French-Belgian mystery film The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun alongside Benjamin Biolay and Italian actor Elio Germano.[13] It was the first of a three consecutive French-speaking roles for Mavor, who speaks French fluently, followed in 2016 by supporting roles in both Yvan Attal's satire about antisemitism Ils sont partout and the period drama Cézanne et moi, about the friendship between novelist Émile Zola and painter Paul Cézanne and starring Guillaume Canet and Guillaume Gallienne in the two leading roles.

On television, Mavor portrayed Princess Elizabeth of York in the 2013 period drama The White Queen for BBC One.[14] Later that year, she joined Will Merrick in stage production Boys at the Arcola Theatre in London.[15] Mavor's next television role was in Channel 4 historical miniseries New Worlds, where she played Jamie Dornan's love interest in a 17th-century story set in England.[16] In May 2014, she appeared in the episode "En apesanteur" ("At zero gravity") of the French TV show Casting(s) by Pierre Niney.

In 2017, Mavor had a supporting role in the mystery drama The Sense of an Ending, starring Jim Broadbent and Charlotte Rampling, then took a leading role in the romance film Modern Life Is Rubbish, which portrays the ups and downs throughout the years of a relationship between a man and a woman who share a passion for alternative rock. In 2018, she had a role in the black comedy Dead in a Week: Or Your Money Back, starring Aneurin Barnard and Tom Wilkinson. The same year she starred alongside John Malkovich in the BBC One miniseries The ABC Murders, based on the mystery novel by Agatha Christie; alongside David Kross in the biographical film The Keeper, about the life of German football player Bert Trautmann; and alongside Vincent Cassel and Olga Kurylenko in another French-language production, L'Empereur de Paris, about early 18th-century French criminalist Eugène François Vidocq, the man who's considered the first detective in history.

Mavor was also set to appear in the Netflix-produced Gore Vidal biopic titled Gore, which was indefinitely shelved following leading actor Kevin Spacey's sexual misconduct allegations.[17][18]

Personal life

Mavor has two brothers, Hugo and Alex.[1] She can play the piano, and also speaks French fluently. In 2005, she was a mezzo-soprano at the National Youth Choir of Scotland.[19] She was voted 78th in the UK edition of FHM's 100 World's Sexiest Women 2012.[20] In 2013, Screen International named her as one of the UK Stars of Tomorrow.[21]

Filmography

Feature films

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2013	Not Another Happy Ending	Nicola Ball
	Sunshine on Leith	Liz Henshaw
2015	The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun	Dany	French-language film
2016	The Jews	Marie	French-language film
	Cézanne and I	Jeanne	French-language film
2017	The Sense of an Ending	Young Veronica
	Modern Life Is Rubbish	Natalie
2018	Dead In A Week (or your money back)	Ellie
	L'Empereur de Paris	Annette	French-language film
2019	The Keeper	Margaret
	Balance, Not Symmetry[22]	Dolly

Short films

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2011	Disco	Girl in Queue	[23]
2013	Hamburger	Girl	[24]
2017	Winning Marge	Kim	[25]

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2011–2012	Skins	Mini McGuinness	E4 series, 18 episodes Nominated — TV Choice Award for Best Actress
2013	The White Queen	Princess Elizabeth of York	BBC One miniseries, 3 episodes
2014	New Worlds	Beth Fanshawe	E4 miniseries, 4 episodes
	Casting(s)		French-language Canal+ sitcom
2015	Virtuoso	Marie	TV movie directed by Alan Ball
2018	The ABC Murders	Thora Grey	BBC One miniseries, 3 episodes
2019	Il était une seconde fois	Louise	French-language ARTE miniseries, 4 episodes

Stage

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2013	Boys	Sophie	Arcola Theatre
2016	Good Canary	Annie Parker	Rose Theatre

References

1. "Freya Mavor interview". SkinsFansite. 19 January 2011.
2. "Freya Mavor Skins Actress". Scotsman. 27 January 2011. Retrieved 10 March 2012.
3. "The new star of Skins - Freya". SkinsFansite. Retrieved 5 April 2012.
4. "10 things you need to know about Freya Mavor". InstyleUK. February 2012. Retrieved 5 April 2012.
5. Leonard, Sue (2012) In Tune with the Times Archived 8 March 2014 at the Wayback Machine The Sunday Times, Retrieved 8 March 2014
6. Christie, Janet (27 July 2013)Freya Mavor: ‘The best female characters are mad’ The Scotsman, Retrieved 8 March 2014
7. "Freya Mavor plays Mini - Channel 4 - Info - Press".
8. "Nominations TV Choice Awards 2012". tvchoicemagazine. Archived from the original on 27 May 2012. Retrieved 22 May 2012.
9. Milligan, Lauren. "Pringle's Girl".
10. "STV programmes news and information".
11. "Shooting begins in Glasgow on Not Another Happy Ending". Screendaily.
12. Kemp, Stuart (5 November 2012). "The Proclaimers Musical Adaptation 'Sunshine on Leith' Begins Filming". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 16 November 2012.
13. Lemercier, Fabien (27 October 2014). "La Dame dans l'auto avec des lunettes et un fusil in post-production". Cineuropa. Retrieved 31 December 2014.
14. "The White Queen, a new ten-part drama for BBC One". BBC. 31 August 2012. Retrieved 18 July 2013.
15. Jeffery, Morgan (7 October 2013). "Will Merrick, Freya Mavor on new play 'Boys', 'Skins' and what's next". Digital Spy. Retrieved 15 October 2013.
16. "Young cast announced for New Worlds". ScreenTerrier. 19 July 2013. Archived from the original on 3 July 2015. Retrieved 20 July 2013.
17. Burwick, Kevin (26 October 2018). "Firing Kevin Spacey and Scrapping Gore Cost Netflix Almost $40M". MovieWeb. Retrieved 27 December 2018.
18. Barfield, Charles (26 October 2018). "Script For Kevin Spacey's 'Gore' Biopic Shows Why Netflix Abandoned The Just-Wrapped Film". The Playlist. Retrieved 27 December 2018.
19. "Freya Mavor Credits". hamiltonhodell. Retrieved 31 August 2012.
20. Gold, Adam (2 May 2012). "100 sexiest women in the world 2012". FHM. Archived from the original on 5 May 2012. Retrieved 6 May 2012.
21. "Screen unveils 2013 UK Stars of Tomorrow.She said in an interview that she hated Niall Horan from One Direction"
22. Grater, Tom (5 October 2018). "Laura Harrier, Bria Vinaite, Lily Newmark board 'Balance, Not Symmetry' with Biffy Clyro (exclusive)". Screen International. Retrieved 30 December 2018.
23. "Disco short film". IMDb Pro. Retrieved 28 August 2012.
24. "Hamburger, short film with Freya Mavor". youtube. Retrieved 18 July 2013.
25. "Winning Marge". maxlincolnfilm.com. Retrieved 27 December 2018.

External links

• Freya Mavor on IMDb
• Freya Mavor on Twitter