Isis Hainsworth is having the year of her life and she can’t quite believe it.
“Lucky” is a word the Edinburgh actress uses over and over during our conversation, but compiling the CV she has put together in just five years and being named by industry bible Screen Daily as one of its Stars Of Tomorrow requires an abundance of talent and hard graft more than it does a sprinkling of luck.
The humble 23-year-old has been a working actor from the moment she left school, moving to London a matter of weeks after her exams to take a leading role in a West End show. She has barely stopped since, and this year she has starred in a well-received Netflix film called Metal Lords, has the lead role in teen horror series Red Rose, which is currently airing on the BBC, and in a few weeks she’ll be seen alongside Billie Piper, Andrew Scott and Bella Ramsey in Lena Dunham’s adaptation of children’s novel Catherine Called Birdy.
“It does feel like quite a pivotal year for me,” she said. “It’s quite overwhelming. It’s been incredible – quite a different year from the ones I’ve had before. A lot is going on and there’s been a lot to get my head around and new stuff to get used to, but it’s good. Things like social media, there’s a lot more people looking at me than before, but it’s cool and hopefully it means I can keep on doing work that I love – that’s the plan.”
Being named by Screen Daily as one of their future stars – following in the footsteps of big names such as Emily Blunt and Benedict Cumberbatch – as well as fellow industry bible Variety putting her on its list of Top 10 Europeans to watch feels surreal to Hainsworth.
“These are things I’ve been watching for a long time, so to have my name up there with all of these amazing people that have come before me is a pinch-me moment. I don’t know yet if I quite belong there, but I’m working on it. I hope I do it justice.”
There was creativity in her family – music and art – and as a child Hainsworth’s passion for dancing gave her a love of performing. At secondary school, drama class offered the opportunity to perform in school shows and she discovered her adoration for acting. While school didn’t give her as much opportunity to indulge her love of the arts as she would have liked, she’s appreciative of the teachers who helped her along the way.
“I’m really grateful for those few who supported me,” she continued. “I feel like most schools don’t really support the arts that much – we got to do drama, music and art for a few years and then we had to choose just one and that was it.
“It feels like they don’t consider the arts to be very important, which is a shame when you are more artistic than academic, so I found that really difficult.”
She attended two youth theatres in her home city – Lothian Youth Arts & Musicals Company and Strange Town Theatre. It was the latter that put her forward for Our Ladies Of Perpetual Succour, the West End musical adaptation of Alan Warner’s cult Scottish novel The Sopranos, about a group of schoolgirls let loose in Edinburgh for the day.
“The whole thing was like a dream but I was absolutely terrified,” she admitted. “It was also one of the best experiences I’ve ever had, moving down to London to do a West End show at 18. Once the show finished, I felt I couldn’t leave, that I had to stay down there and keep going, try to do this job as long as I possibly could.”
Her first screen role was in the BBC/Netflix miniseries One Of Us and she followed that up with parts in Harlots, Les Miserables, In Plain Sight, Wanderlust and The Victim. Film credits included Emma and Misbehaviour, opposite Keira Knightley and Jessie Buckley, while she starred in the National Theatre’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Before all of that, though, she had a decision to make when it was recommended she change her name – she was named after a Bob Dylan song – ahead of her move to London.
“I was advised to change it by a few people and I came up with a list with lots of options, but none of them felt like me,” she explained. “They were all lovely names but they weren’t my name and it felt strange, so in the end I thought, ‘What the hell, why am I giving them any power, let’s take it back’. I’m so glad I did, and now I get messages from other Isises in the world saying how they are happy to see someone else with their name and doing it unashamedly and not hiding away and pretending we’re not called that.”
Another important decision she had to make was whether she should attend drama school, like so many of her contemporaries.
“I was planning on going to drama school because that is what I’d seen successful actors do – they did their three years there and started working – but for me it worked out differently by getting a job straight out of secondary school. I still worry I should maybe have gone to drama school or whether I should go now.
“Lots of my friends have gone and they say there are pros and cons around it. Right now I’m happy to be doing what I’m doing and learning on the job.”
Hainsworth returned to Edinburgh during the pandemic – “my mum was worrying about me and I was worrying about her, so we decided to just be together” – and now splits her time between her home city and London.
“The cities are very differently paced – London is intense, so it’s nice to have a break from there when I need it.”
It was while she was back in Edinburgh that she sent an audition tape for Metal Lords, about two high school friends who decide to form a heavy metal band and recruit cello player Emily, played by Hainsworth.
“It was at the height of the first lockdown, and I sent a tape and then did a few re-calls over Zoom, then some chemistry reads, and I was offered the part, but it was all dependent on whether I could get a visa and I was told not to get my hopes up because it was lockdown and it was never going to happen,” she recalled.
“But my team of amazing people got me the visa, and so I got to go to America for the first time. It was crazy. We were there while the election was going on, so it was a mad time in American history but we were there just to make a wee movie.
“I had to learn to play the cello, which was really hard, but fun. I had a lesson every day for an hour over Zoom for a month and I continued having lessons while we filmed.”
Up next was Red Rose and then Catherine Called Birdy.
“I feel so lucky to have been involved with the cast – I couldn’t believe I was involved and that they wanted me to be involved with all of those people. Working with Lena was really wonderful and incredible. The whole experience was really special.”
Hainsworth is currently in Edinburgh, taking in the last days of this year’s Fringe and holding out for a role that is “close to her heart which will challenge me”, rather than taking a part just for the sake of working. This year’s success has made that possible.
She says being stopped on the street by people who recognise her is happening with more regularity these days, which she is still struggling to wrap her head around, and while she still feels young to be called a role model, she hopes the furrow she has ploughed so far can inspire others – no matter their background – to follow.
“I don’t look at myself as anyone particularly special, but if people can look at me and think, ‘This is actually possible’, then go for it. I’d love people to see this is something they can be doing, no matter what background they are from. I hope I can be a little bit of a role model for people, but I do still feel young and slightly ‘Who the hell am I?’ but I’d feel very proud if anyone felt like they could do this job because I’d done it.
She added: “I definitely still have imposter syndrome – why the hell am I here, how has it happened?
“And I don’t know if lots of people are lucky enough to do the job they love, but the fact I get to do so, that I’ve somehow wangled my way in and I get to do this, I just feel so, so lucky.”
A very modern horror
Red Rose is Isis Hainsworth’s first time making a horror but she says it was the human relationships that drew her to the series.
She plays Rochelle, one of a group of Bolton teenagers enjoying the summer holidays after their GCSEs. Their phones are taken over by an app called Red Rose, which threatens them with dangerous consequences if they don’t meet its demands.
As well as a cautionary tale about the hold mobile phones have on many people, it also explores the importance of relationships, and that appealed to Hainsworth.
She said: “It’s a horror and it’s very much about teenagers and the relationships they have with their phones and how it can control you. But what drew me to it was the characters and the friendship groups – that’s what I really loved about it and it felt so real. I was excited to play Rochelle because she was a very different character to anyone I’ve played before.”
The cast had to remain in a bubble while filming during the pandemic and she believes that helped them all to become such good friends. In order to perfect the local burr, they continued to speak in a Bolton accent when the cameras stopped rolling. She said: “We were lucky we had a girl from Bolton in the show and we also had accent lessons. It’s a very specific accent, so I hope I managed to bring it to life.”
Red Rose, BBC iPlayer, also BBC3 on Mondays and BBC1 on Thursdays
Enjoy the convenience of having The Sunday Post delivered as a digital ePaper straight to your smartphone, tablet or computer.
Subscribe for only £5.49 a month and enjoy all the benefits of the printed paper as a digital replica.
Subscribe