Since graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 2015, Port Talbot-born Rosie Sheehy has sought to balance stage and screen work, but life had other plans – and it would be false modesty for the two-time best actress Olivier Award nominee (for Machinal in 2025, and Guess How Much I Love You? in 2026) to pretend otherwise.
“It was the way the cookie crumbled because whatever was being presented to me on stage, it was brilliant,” concedes the actress, who namechecks the likes of Conor McPherson, Jeremy Herrin and Richard Jones as theatre directors that offered irresistible roles. “It felt like opportunities were coming and I just had to grab them.”
Still, balance is finally being achieved, and earlier this year Sheehy shot her most high-profile film role to date – writer/director Josie Rourke’s Custom Of The Country, adapted from the Edith Wharton novel, and cast by Nina Gold, who had earlier championed her for a role in TV miniseries Chernobyl.
Playing the best friend of Sydney Sweeney’s protagonist, Sheehy spent five weeks in Lisbon shooting Rourke’s literary adaptation, sandwiched in between stage roles at the Royal Court (Luke Norris’s Guess How Much I Love You?, a virtual two-hander co-starring Robert Aramayo) and The Bridge (Simon Stone’s The Oresteia, alongside David Morrissey and Mary-Louise Parker). In mid-September, she began a six‑month shoot with a leading role in a UK comedy-drama streamer series, unannounced at press time.
“Casting directors would ask what I was seeking on-screen, and I’d say the kind of character arc I’m allowed to portray on stage,” says Sheehy. Custom Of The Country, in which she ages from a teenager to the wife of a senator, gives her precisely that.
“I want to be trusted on screen,” she says, mentioning Helen McCrory, Janet McTeer and Jessie Buckley as actresses whose career arcs – spanning stage and screen – have inspired her, and Joachim Trier, Andrea Arnold and Mike Leigh among filmmakers she feels drawn towards. “Anything that shows human intimacy or emotional obstacles” are the stories that have a particular pull. “My favourite films, my favourite novels, are ones that are deeply affecting and pull the most empathy out of an audience.”
Contact: Josh Woodford, Hamilton Hodell
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