Sophie Winkleman

Early life

Sophie Lara Winkleman was born on 5 August 1980 in Primrose Hill, London. Her father, Barry Winkleman, published the Times Atlas of World History, and her mother is the children's author Cindy Black. The television presenter Claudia Winkleman is her half-sister from her father's first marriage to Eve Pollard. Sophie Winkleman was educated at the City of London School for Girls and at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where she studied English literature. She joined the Cambridge Footlights and wrote and performed in the comic revue Far Too Happy, which toured Britain for three months and gained the troupe's first Perrier Award nomination in 20 years. She joined the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain in 1997. She is a soprano, reprising her singing in the First Love series for Sky Arts.

Career

Television

Winkleman's credits include recurring roles in series including Big Suze in Peep Show, numerous roles in Harry & Paul, Joely in White Teeth, Fiona in The Trial of Tony Blair, Abby in Plus One, Katerina in Red Dwarf: Back to Earth, Donna in Lead Balloon, Prudence in Keen Eddie, Elle Kensington in Chasing Alice, Regan Peverill in the pilot episode of Lewis, Angela Warren in Agatha Christie's Poirot (in the episode "Five Little Pigs"), Princess Eleanor in The Palace, Ghislaine in Robin Hood, Alice Shadwell in Dalziel and Pascoe, Ann Hamilton in Death in Paradise, Jill in TV Land's Hot in Cleveland, Sharon Kirby in CSI Miami and Dorothy Gibson in Titanic.

Winkleman was nominated for Best Newcomer by the BBC for her performance as Clara Gold in Waking the Dead. Winkleman made her debut on American television as the star of the NBC sitcom 100 Questions as main character Charlotte Payne. She guest starred as Joy's younger sister on one episode of Hot in Cleveland and was a recurring guest on the hit series Two and a Half Men as Zoey, the British girlfriend of Walden Schmidt.

Stage

Winkleman's roles while at Cambridge University included the Bride in García Lorca's Blood Wedding, which toured the amphitheatres of Greece, Elizabeth in Six Degrees of Separation, which played at the Edinburgh Festival, Abigail in Arthur Miller's The Crucible, Dockdaisy in Bertolt Brecht's The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Kate in Alan Ayckbourn's Confusions, Madame de Merteuil in Christopher Hampton's Les Liaisons Dangereuses and Fraulein Kost in Kander and Ebb's Cabaret all at the ADC. Winkleman's stage career after Cambridge includes a season at the Royal Shakespeare Company, where she played Veronique in Laurence Boswell's adaptation of Beauty and the Beast and a summer in Bath with the Peter Hall Company playing a variety of roles including Archangela in Galileo's Daughter, a new play by Timberlake Wertenbaker, Violet in George Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman, and Charlotte in Molière's Don Juan. In 2012, she played Helena in Eric Idle's musical What About Dick at the Orpheum Theatre in downtown Los Angeles.

Film

Winkleman's film credits include the lead roles in the films Shattered and Love Live Long, written and directed by Mike Figgis. Winkleman played the comic role of Debbie Levine in Pathe's romantic comedy Suzie Gold and the older Susan Pevensie in the Disney film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Other film roles include the leads in the shorts Seared, Love Letters, and The Lost Domain, a cinematic take on Alain-Fournier's Le Grand Meaulnes, and Post, directed by Debs Gardner-Paterson.

Radio

Winkleman is a regular in BBC Radio 4 comedy and drama. She is among the cast of comedy programmes such as Marcus Brigstocke's Giles Wemmbley-Hogg Goes Off, and such afternoon plays as Tea for Two. She played Polly Pot in P.G. Wodehouse's Uncle Fred in the Springtime with Alfred Molina and Rufus Sewell, Gloria in Bernard Shaw's You Never Can Tell, and Zoe in Alan Ayckbourn's Henceforward, alongside Jared Harris, all for Radio 4. She played the role of Sasha in Von Ribbentrop's Watch, a historical drama, Anna Freud in the play Dr. Freud Will See You Now, Mrs. Hitler, by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, and the Amazon warrior princess Penthesilea alongside Alistair McGowan and Stephen Mangan in the Radio 4 comic fantasy series ElvenQuest, by Anil Gupta and Richard Pinto. She has starred in several Doctor Who plays for Radio 4.

Personal life

Winkleman married Lord Frederick Windsor, the son of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, in Hampton Court Palace on 12 September 2009. By virtue of her marriage, she became entitled to be styled as Lady Frederick Windsor, but continues to use her own name in her professional career. On 15 August 2013, the couple had a daughter, who was born at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, and is the first grandchild of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent. Their second daughter was born in 2016 at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.

In November 2017, Winkleman was seriously injured in a head-on car crash, suffering a broken back and foot. She was a back-seat passenger in a car when another vehicle struck her car after swerving to avoid a deer. It was reported that she would not suffer long-term problems, but faced weeks of recuperation.

In June 2020, she became royal patron of the Children's Surgery Foundation. The following month, she became first female patron of School-Home Support, and in June 2022, she presented the BBC Radio 4 Appeal on its behalf.

In February 2025, she spoke at a conference for the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, alongside figures including Jordan Peterson, Nigel Farage and Peter Thiel.

Filmography

Film

Television

Audio

Theatre

Bibliography

References

References

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13. (15 June 2011). "Lead Balloon". BBC.
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15. "Sophie Winkleman List of Movies and TV Shows". TV Guide.
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19. (4 November 2002). "Waking the Dead". BBC.
20. (25 May 2010). "True to Formula: NBC's '100 Questions'". The Washington Post.
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30. (5 July 2016). "Isabella Windsor christened at Kensington Palace in the same gown worn by Princess Charlotte". Hello.
31. (3 December 2017). "Claudia Winkleman's royal actress sister 'seriously injured in head-on crash'". [[Daily Mirror]].
32. (13 June 2020). "Lady Frederick Windsor becomes royal patron of The Children's Surgery Foundation".
33. "School-Home Support | Announcing our newest patron, Lady Sophie Windsor".
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40. (22 July 2004). "Don Juan/ Man and Superman". [[The Guardian]].
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