Freya Mavor Biography

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.

Early life

Mavor was born in Glasgow but grew up in Inverleith, Edinburgh. Her father, James Mavor, is an award-winning playwright who leads the MA screenwriting course at Napier University. Her grandfather, Ronald Bingo Mavor, was The Scotsman's theatre critic in the early 1960s before he became the director of the Scottish Arts Council. 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. 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. For a period, she lived in La Rochelle, France. She studied at Collge Eugne Fromentin in La Rochelle and at Mary Erskine School in Edinburgh, and has been a member of the National Youth Theatre since 2008. Her first acting experience was in school productions of Shakespeare"?s The Tempest as Miranda and in The Merchant of Venice, directed by John C. Allan, prior to a stint in the National Youth Theatre.

Career

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

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

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. 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. In 2015, she starred in Joann Sfar's French-Belgian mystery film La dame dans l'auto avec des lunettes et un fusil alongside Benjamin Biolay and Italian actor Elio Germano. 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 Czanne et moi, about the friendship between novelist mile Zola and painter Paul Czanne 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. Later that year, she joined Will Merrick in stage production Boys at the Arcola Theatre in London. 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. 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 Trautmann, 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 Eugne Franois 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.

Personal life

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

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
	Czanne 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
	Trautmann	Margaret
	L'Empereur de Paris	Annette	French-language film

Short Films

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2011	Disco	Girl in Queue
2013	Hamburger	Girl
2017	Winning Marge	Kim

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 tait 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