Chances are that you know Yvonne Strahovski from her chilling portrayal of Serena Joy
on The Handmaid's Tale. But you probably don't know her whole story. From growing up in Australia
to becoming an Emmy nominee, here's a look at her stunning transformation.
Strahovski was born on July 30, 1982 in Sydney, Australia to Polish immigrant parents. An
only child, she was a straight A student in school. She reportedly once said,
"I loved school, I loved putting on my uniform and doing homework every day. I was one of
those good students that the teachers liked. I guess that's got to be a pretty nerdy, geeky
part of me."
Outside of school, Strahoski took weekly Polish lessons on Saturdays. As she revealed to GQ
in 2015,
"It's my first language and we speak it at home. I was a goody two shoes — a straight-A
girl, and I took pride in my studies."
Perhaps Strahovski's early experience with multiple languages helped her perfect her
American accent, which quite frankly is flawless. Though she eventually left home, she's maintained
her Polish roots and can still speak the language fluently.
Strahovski has had a taste for the arts from a young age, and it wasn't just acting that
she was interested in. In fact, she studied dance from the ages of 5 to 18. She eventually
chose to pursue acting over dance, but the skills she picked up have served her well
throughout her career. For example, when she had to do fight scenes on Chuck, her dancing
abilities came in handy. As she told TV Guide in 2007,
"I have a memory for choreography. It's not hard for me to do all that stuff. In fact
it's one of my favorite parts of the job."
She's also been able to show off her dancing skills by actually dancing, in the likes of
Chuck and the Australian series Stateless.
Strahovski was obsessed with acting when she was a kid, although she didn't always feel
like she was suited for it. As she admitted to the New Zealand website Stuff in 2017,
"I remember being the lanky, goofy, acne-covered child who was always clowning around in front
of a home video camera. And there was just never any question in my mind that I wanted
to go down this path."
Alas, Strahovski's parents were concerned that an acting career wasn't stable enough
for their daughter, so they tried to convince her to pursue medicine or law instead. But
she was stubborn, and once she made up her mind, her parents became supportive. Strahovski
eventually enrolled in the University of Western Sydney's acting program, where she trained
for three years. As she explained in an interview for AussieTheatre.com,
"That degree was predominantly stage based [...] I think we weren't too prepared for
the camera world when we graduated, even though most of our castings and auditions and things
were for camera."
Things weren't exactly easy for Strahovski during this time, as she had to make ends
meet with odd jobs like ushering at a movie theater and waitressing. As she recalled to
Stuff,
"I enjoyed waitressing. It was kind of like going to the gym for 10 hours [...] It felt
very satisfying after a hard day's work."
Shortly after graduating from drama school, Strahovski began working professionally in
Australia in commercials and on TV shows. Her early work included ads for Dominoes,
razors, and kettle chips. She was also cast opposite fellow Australian actress Rachel
Taylor in the drama series headLand. Strahovski's lack of camera training in school meant that
these first few jobs were like additional training for her. As she put it in an interview
for AussieTheatre.com,
"It was more like I hit the ground running and learnt on the job in a way."
Strahovski soon began to rack up a healthy list of credits, although she never imagined
that she would end up moving to the United States so quickly. Nevertheless, she did visit
there for pilot season with some friends. While in Hollywood, she found an American
manager, and after that, things started to develop pretty quickly.
Everything changed for Strahovski after one fateful audition. In 2007, her American manager
sent her a script for the action-spy comedy-drama series Chuck. She was back in Australia at
the time, but within three days of returning to America for her audition, she'd landed
the role. As she put it in a chat with AussieTheatre.com,
"I call it my fairytale story."
At first, Strahovski was sure that she'd eventually have to return to Australia. As she recalled
to Stuff in 2017,
"It was me and my little blue suitcase for the rest of that year because I kept thinking,
'Oh, I'm probably going to go home now.' After the pilot and an indie movie and Chuck was
picked up for a series, I realized I probably should rent a proper place because I was living
in a shoebox studio apartment and rented eight cars by that point from a Hollywood rental
place."
Chuck lasted for five seasons on NBC from 2007 to 2012, and after it ended, Strahovski's
career really started to take off in America. From 2012 to 2013, she starred on the Showtime
series Dexter as the deadly Hannah McKay for the show's final two seasons. She initially
didn't realize that her character would end up hanging around for so long. As she told
Collider in 2013,
"I was surprised when I got to the end of Season 7, and I read that scene where she
leaves the black orchid at his doorstep, I thought, 'Wow, this is a pretty open ending.
This might mean that they want me back.' [...] I was definitely surprised to have survived,
and to have played such a pivotal role in the actual ending [...] It was quite a journey
and quite an experience."
Soon thereafter, Strahovski landed another major role when she was cast in 24: Live Another
Day, which presented some new challenges for her. As she admitted to Collider in 2014,
"I think the style and the way that this show is filmed, with the cameras always moving,
means that you can't really lie in front of these cameras. They’re really with you,
in the moment, and they linger. That's what I like about this show."
Perhaps the biggest role of Yvonne Strahovski's career thus far kicked off in 2017 when she
started playing Serena Joy Waterford in Hulu's dystopian drama The Handmaid's Tale. For Strahovski,
the show presented an opportunity to explore a fascinating, complex role unlike any she'd
played before. As she explained to Flare Magazine in 2017,
"It was very hard to relate to her; I don't really relate to her. There’s not a lot
to like about her. She's very unfriendly, she's unapproachable, she's very harsh, she's
brutal, at times, and you'll see her be more brutal as the show goes on, and it's not something
that came easily."
She added,
"I saw this woman who was an empty carcass, a shell, with not a lot around her to fill
those empty holes and that turned her into a monster, but also a monster that had to
try and survive in this cage, in this world."
While Strahovski may have found it difficult to play Serena, she made it look easy, and
she even earned an Emmy nomination for the show's second season.
"She's not like Serena. Yvonne is not like Serena. They're very different. You're very
sweet."
2017 was a big year for Strahovski. Not only did The Handmaid's Tale start airing then,
it was also when she got married. She and her now-husband Tim Loden said "I do" at a
low-key ceremony in Paso Robles, California. The wedding was so low-key, in fact, that
the public didn't even find out about it until months later, as Strahovski revealed the big
news at the Emmy Awards that September. As she recalled,
"We had a heatwave [...] and we ended up jumping in the lake in our suit and gown, just to
cool down. It was just ridiculously hot. But we had a great time."
"But we all made it through. We all did some dancing at the end of the night. It was fantastic."
Strahovski first met Loden back in 2010 when he guest starred on an episode of Chuck. These
days, the couple appear to be as happy as ever. On New Year's Eve 2019, Strahovski wrote
a touching tribute to her hubby on Instagram in which she called him her "greatest support,"
while adding,
"Here's to continued adventure, life and love without limits, amazing health and balance,
connection and community, more outdoors and crazy good creativity."
In October 2018, Strahovski and Loden welcomed their first child, a son named William. She
announced the birth in a touching Instagram post, as she declared,
"My heart has melted into a billion pieces a thousand times already. We have been blessed
with the greatest joy of our lives, our baby boy."
Strahovski worked steadily in the lead-up to the birth, but as she told Vogue in July
of 2018,
"I'm due for a break. It's been a little nonstop."
As Strahovksi later told Glamour, she worried that the bad energy of her Handmaid's Tale
character might rub off on her baby. As she put it,
"I was always envisioning him, growing inside of me, separate in this safety bubble that
nothing could touch. No matter what kind of emotion I was portraying on camera, I just
really tried to separate it."
When Strahovski returned to set after giving birth, her husband was right there to help
her. As she recalled,
"[He] came to work with me every single day with my baby so I was never far away and could
still breastfeed on demand."
Despite all that support, during her pregnancy Strahovski actually struggled to be around
her husband for a bizarre reason.
"Women start to gag around their husbands, 'cause they can no longer stand the smell
of them, which is exactly what happened to me."
Strahovski's acting career has largely taken place in America, but in 2018 she returned
to her homeland to work on the movie Angel of Mine, which was shot in Melbourne. It was
Strahovski's first time back in Australia in three years, and it had been even longer
since she'd worked there, so she actually had to relearn her Australian accent. As she
explained to Vogue,
"It does help being here in Melbourne and surrounded by an Australian crew and having
friends here in Melbourne who are keeping it real for me and my weird, mashy accent."
Strahovski talked about her accent struggles some more during a 2019 appearance on Late
Night with Seth Meyers, as she admitted,
"I feel so un-Australian saying that it's harder to do the Australian accent now than
it is to do the American one. I've spent 12 years here and most of my roles, in fact all
of them except three, have been in an American accent of some kind. When I go back home it's
very awkward to get the note from the director that, 'Oh, you have to do that again because
you sounded a little bit American.' It's shameful!"
Strahovski managed to find time in between seasons of The Handmaid's Tale to take on
a very different role in the 2020 Australian miniseries Stateless, which was based on true
stories about people in Australian immigration detention. This was a nice change for Strahovski,
but it definitely wasn't easy. As she told TellTaleTV,
"As I got myself into the mode of playing Sofie Werner, I realized, 'Wow, we're really
in for it.' And I was. It was an incredibly intense journey, but I definitely loved going
down it. I learned so much and we’re really proud of the work."
While Strahovski had struggled to find anything in common with Serena on The Handmaid's Tale,
Sofie was much easier to relate to. As she put it,
"I sort of melted into her."
Stateless also gave Strahovski the opportunity to meet real refugees. As she recalled,
"Just in talking to them, it was so eye-opening for me. I had not met anyone before who had
been through something like that [...] which just made the experience much more powerful."
"There were many stories that we heard in the first few days of working and getting
to know these people of what they've been through. I mean, there's a lot of emotions,
a lot of tears."
Based on Strahovski's intense approach to her career thus far, we're sure that there
are many more great things in store for her!
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