Hattie Morahan

Early life

Morahan was born in 1978, the younger daughter of director Christopher Morahan and actress Anna Carteret. Her older sister Rebecca is a theatre director, and her half-brother Andy is a music video and film director. As a child, she attended parties thrown by Sir Laurence Olivier, who once helped her with her mathematics homework.

Morahan was educated at Frensham Heights School. She wanted to attend Newcastle University, but her father encouraged her to follow older sister Rebecca to New Hall, Cambridge, from which she graduated with a BA degree in English in 2000.

Career

Morahan made her professional debut at 17, playing the leading role of Una Gwithian in a two-part BBC television adaptation of The Peacock Spring (1996).

Morahan joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2001, making her theatre debut at Stratford-upon-Avon in Love in a Wood and her London debut at the Barbican Theatre (that December) in Hamlet. Other credits for the company included Night of the Soul and Prisoner's Dilemma.

At the Tricycle Theatre in March 2004 she played Ruby, a 1960s hippie who becomes a disenchanted 1980s political wife, for the Oxford Stage Company revival of Peter Flannery's Singer. In the same year she first worked with Katie Mitchell at the National Theatre when she starred in the title role of Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis.

In July 2005, she appeared again at the National in Nick Dear's Power, staged in the Cottesloe Theatre and also won acclaim at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, in September 2005 playing Viola in Ian Brown's production of Twelfth Night.

In 2006, she played the leading role, of Penelope Toop, in Douglas Hodge's touring revival of Philip King's hit farce See How They Run. In the same year, for her Lyttelton Theatre performance as Nina in Katie Mitchell's staging of Chekhov's The Seagull, she was awarded second prize in the Ian Charleson Awards 2007.

TV credits include Bodies and BBC One's Outnumbered, in which she portrays recurring character Jane. She has appeared in series 1, 2 and 4 of Outnumbered, as well as the Christmas Specials in 2009, 2011, 2012 and 2024.

In January 2008, she appeared in the film The Bank Job, and she played a mounted policewoman in the ITV comedy drama pilot Bike Squad.

Giving a career enhancing performance, she also played Elinor Dashwood in BBC One's three-part adaptation, by Andrew Davies, of Jane Austen's novel Sense and Sensibility, first broadcast on New Year's Day 2008. On 13 June 2008, she won Best Actress at the 14th Shanghai Television Festival for her performance.

She worked again with director Katie Mitchell, co-starring with Benedict Cumberbatch in The City, a new, darkly comic mystery play by Martin Crimp, 24 April – 7 June 2008.

In July 2008, she returned to the National to appear in ...some trace of her, Katie Mitchell's adaptation of Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, co-starring Ben Whishaw at the Cottesloe Theatre, while later in the year she played Mary in T.S. Eliot's The Family Reunion at the Donmar Warehouse. She returned to the National in April 2009 to play Kay Conway in Rupert Goold's production of J. B. Priestley's Time and the Conways in the Lyttelton auditorium and also Dawn in Caryl Churchill's Three More Sleepless Nights in the same season.

On 28 February 2010, she appeared as Miss Enid in Lark Rise to Candleford, and then as Martina Twain in the BBC adaptation of Martin Amis's Money. In the theatre, she played Annie in The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard at The Old Vic theatre, directed by Anna Mackmin, from April to June 2010; a year later returning to the stage in Thea Sharrock's pared-down Sheffield Crucible revival of David Hare's 1978 Plenty: Morahan affords the heady sensation of watching an actress at the top of her game (Sunday Times, Culture, 14 February 2011).

From 29 June to 26 July 2012, she played the lead role of Nora Helmer, opposite Dominic Rowan's Torvald, in a new version of A Doll's House by Simon Stephens at London's Young Vic Theatre, in a production directed by Carrie Cracknell and designed by Ian MacNeil. Her performance saw her named Best Actress at the 2012 Evening Standard Awards and the 2012 Critics' Circle Theatre Awards / She also received a nomination for an Olivier Award for her performance.

From 8 August to 26 October 2013, Morahan reprised her role as Nora Helmer alongside Dominic Rowan, who returned as her husband Torvald, at the Duke of York's Theatre London. The production then transferred to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, NY, in 2014.

In July 2015, Morahan played the role of doomed mother Elizabeth Aldridge in the BBC's two-part television adaptation of Sadie Jones' debut novel The Outcast. The Guardians Julia Raeside was impressed with Morahan's portrayal, writing, "She is so perfectly cast, the lack of her is palpable on screen. We miss her too." The following year, Morahan starred in the five-part BBC series My Mother and Other Strangers.

Personal life

Morahan is married to actor Blake Ritson. They've been in a relationship since they met at university in the late 1990s. Morahan gave birth to the couple's daughter in August 2016 and to their son in 2020.

In 2025, Morahan guest starred as Lady Sarah Vere in multiple episodes of season three of The Gilded Age. Her husband has appeared as a main character in the show since season 1.

Credits

Film and television

Theatre

Radio

References

References

1. Morahan, Andy. "About". AndyMorahan.com.
2. (27 November 2012). "Hattie Morahan pulls it off at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards". Evening Standard.
3. (20 April 2008). "We're just wild about Hattie Morahan". [[The Times]].
4. (20 January 2015). "Hattie Morahan on why it's fun to behave badly". [[The Times]].
5. (30 November 2008). "Relative Values: Anna Carteret and her daughter Hattie Morahan". [[The Times]].
6. "Congregations of the Regent House on 25 and 26 June 1999". [[Cambridge University Reporter]].
7. "Reporter 26/7/00: Congregation of the Regent House on 22 July 2000". [[Cambridge University Reporter]].
8. "Theatre review: Singer at Oxford Stage Company at the Tricycle, Kilburn". Britishtheatreguide.info.
9. Gerald Berkowitz. (24 June 2004). "The Stage / Reviews / Iphigenia at Aulis". Thestage.co.uk.
10. "Theatre review: Power at RNT Cottesloe". Britishtheatreguide.info.
11. "Review of ''Twelfth Night''". The Stage.
12. "Theatre review: See How They Run at Richmond Theatre and touring". Britishtheatreguide.info.
13. John Thaxter. (29 June 2006). "The Stage / Reviews / The Seagull". Thestage.co.uk.
14. (17 August 2007). "Outnumbered ''Press Review''". [[BBC]].
15. Hart, Christopher. (13 January 2008). "Hattie Morahan's Elinor is as good a piece of acting as you're going to see this year". [[Sunday Times]].
16. Billington, Michael. (30 April 2008). "Theatre review: The City / Royal Court, London". The Guardian.
17. Aleks Sierz. (31 July 2008). "The Stage / Reviews / ... some trace of her". Thestage.co.uk.
18. John Thaxter. (26 November 2008). "The Stage / Reviews / The Family Reunion". Thestage.co.uk.
19. John Thaxter. (6 May 2009). "The Stage / Reviews / Time and the Conways". Thestage.co.uk.
20. "United Agents {{!}} Hattie Morahan". United Agents.
21. (5 August 2013). "Interview with Hattie Morahan". Lastminutetheatretickets.com.
22. (2014-02-28). "‘A Doll’s House,’ With Hattie Morahan’s Frantic Nora". The New York Times.
23. "The Outcast: Episode 1 Credits".
24. Raeside, Julia. (13 July 2015). "The Outcast review – 'I feared for Sadie Jones's adaptation of her perfect novel – but it is excellent'". [[The Guardian]].
25. Rampton, James. (9 November 2016). "Hattie Morahan interview: 'There were a few hitches, I was pregnant during the shoot'". [[The Independent]].
26. "A Gilded Conversation with Luke Harlan (Justice for George's Nameless Valet!)".
27. Fry, Janey. (2025-04-20). "Blake Ritson: “My home is very eclectic”".
28. David Stephenson. (12 July 2015). "The Outcast's Hattie Morahan: There won't be any wedding bells this year". [[Daily Express]].
29. Billington, Michael. (2017-06-12). "Anatomy of a Suicide review – a startling study of mothers and daughters". The Guardian.
30. "BBC Radio 4 - Love Stories, Enduring Love".