Lucy from The Chronicles of Narnia movies is all grown up! Actress Georgie Henley has
forged an incredibly interesting creative career for herself. Watch on to discover
how she's flourished and grown up to become unrecognizably gorgeous, both inside and out!
Georgie Henley grew up feeling as if her fictional siblings were her actual, real-life
siblings. Her rise to fame began when she was cast in the Chronicles of Narnia series at just
seven years old. Her character, Lucy Pevensie, was the youngest of four siblings. Life on set wasn't
easy for her at first, but she and her co-stars eventually ended up feeling like a real family.
In the blooper reel for the first movie, viewers can see the four siblings laughing
and singing together on set. And that closeness persisted into the
sequels. In an interview for Prince Caspian, the second Narnia movie,
Henley explained how close she was to Ben Barnes, a newcomer to the on-set family.
"He was like another big brother to me, and that's all that I needed, really."
In 2020, Henley posted some throwback photos from
the Narnia set on her Instagram. As she reminisced in the caption,
"Honestly, all we did was smile every single day, we're so lucky, lucky, lucky."
Playing Lucy Pevensie was a wonderful experience for Henley, but life off set was a different
story for the young star. In 2018, she spoke to The Times of London and revealed that she was
actually the victim of some pretty harsh bullies when she was a kid. She shared,
"I was bullied mercilessly; people were so awful to me at school [...] [It] was
worsened by the films that I had done, by me being in and out of school."
The bullying got so bad that Henley downplayed her acting achievements
and avoided acting in school productions until her final year. After growing up a little more,
she wished that she had been braver in the face of the bullying. As she told The Times,
"It was that thing of not wanting to put your head above the parapet for fear of
it being sliced off, but I should have had the confidence to be proud of what I did."
It's no exaggeration to say that playing Lucy changed Georgie Henley's life.
Many people daydream about being plucked out of obscurity and catapulted to a life of stardom,
and for Henley, this dream became a reality.
"To be in Narnia at 8, how did you get that job?"
"Crazy, yeah. It really was just pot luck, really."
She got the part after being recommended by a local drama teacher. As she described it
to The Times of London, she was just plucked from nowhere. She also noted that she was inexperienced
at the beginning and even started to cry on her first day, when she had to film a scene over and
over again because she thought she was getting it wrong. As she recalled to What's On Stage,
"Narnia gave me everything I have now. At the time I really felt like I'd jumped in at the
deep end – on my first day I had to be told not to look in the camera. But travelling the world
and meeting all those people gave me the hope that I could carry on with acting as a career."
It sounds like Henley's entire acting career was based on one
lucky childhood audition. Talk about destiny taking over!
Henley's days in a fantasy world eventually had to come to an end,
so she filled her time with other projects, like attending an esteemed university! Post-Narnia,
she decided to take a break from professional acting. As she told What's On Stage in 2018,
"I went on and had a normal school life with some smaller film projects on the side."
In 2013, it was announced that Henley had accepted a place at the world-famous Cambridge
University to study English after receiving excellent marks in her final year of school.
Cambridge is ranked by U.S. News and World Report as the ninth best university
in the world, so Henley could rest assured that she was getting a quality education.
She talked with What's On Stage about her university experience, saying,
"Getting to Cambridge and being more anonymous was invaluable.
English Literature was also a great subject, as I got to study some of my favourite writers."
It certainly sounds like Henley was craving a bit of normalcy
after years in the spotlight, and who can blame her?
After her time in Narnia, Henley decided to diversify her acting experience. When
she arrived at Cambridge, she wasn't shy about getting involved in the student theater scene.
In fact, she participated in plenty of student productions of
all shapes and sizes. As she told What's on Stage,
"The theatre scene in Cambridge is incredible, and I'm lucky that I was part of intimate productions
like David Hare's Skylight, or huge musicals like the Cambridge Footlights pantomime."
In 2016, Henley talked with Varsity, Cambridge's student newspaper, about
how acting in student theater productions taught her more about her beloved craft. As she put it,
"I get so nervous when I’m acting, but I ﬁnd that when I’m onstage I completely forget my nerves.
In ﬁlm there’s the sense of ‘it’s forever’, which is also terrifying; I can’t really work
out whether I prefer acting for theatre or ﬁlm, but there are deﬁnitely different pressures."
While Henley didn't pursue that many professional film roles while she
was at Cambridge, she nevertheless gained a vast theatrical education.
Starring in a beloved fantasy series may have jumpstarted Henley's career,
but she quickly proved that she wasn't scared to move on from the role that
made her famous. And over the years, she's more than earned her fair share of attention. In 2014,
for example, she starred in the thriller film The Sisterhood of Night. In a review
in Variety, she was singled out for her performance. As critic Justin Chang noted,
"Adorably earnest as she was then [in the Chronicles of Narnia series], she's a quietly
bewitching presence here, a performer who truly does seem to warrant her own cultlike following."
In 2018, Henley starred in a heavy-hitting two-person play called Angry at London's Southwark
Playhouse. What's On Stage reviewed the production and raved about Henley's performance, writing,
"Henley's physical control and ability to construct countless individuals feels
uncannily effortless and, for a performer making their professional stage debut,
this no doubt bodes well for the future."
"It's definitely a jump in the deep end to be doing this play Angry by Philip Ridley,
a playwright who I just admire so much."
It's clear critics have long been impressed with Henley's acting skills,
and we sure hope that trend continues for years to come.
While Henley's acting talents have been clear since her younger days,
that's not the only talent she brings to a film set. In 2016,
she wrote and directed a short film called Tide. She'd been thinking about the idea for
the film for five years before she finally made it. She was still attending Cambridge at the time,
which ultimately felt perfect to her. As she explained to the student paper,
"There's so much talent in Cambridge and so many
resources that I wanted to make the most of, that I thought, 'Why not?'"
While Tide was just a small production that Henley made with her university friends,
it still managed to be a success in its own way. Plenty of people took to
social media to praise her work, with one one person on Twitter calling it:
"A beautiful touching story with really nice photography."
Another fan gushed,
"I would like to congratulate everyone involved but especially [Henley] for directing something
so beautiful and important. I was crying pretty much all through out."
Obviously, audiences have had no trouble noticing just how multi-talented Henley truly is.
It's no secret that Georgie Henley got used to working on movies with hefty budgets from
a very young age. But that doesn't mean she's now afraid to take on some less-than-lucrative roles.
Far from it, in fact, as many of her recent projects have been decidedly
low-budget affairs. In addition to writing and directing her own short film,
she's also appeared in some experimental short films made by her friends.
In 2018, she shared photos on Instagram from the set of a short film called Paradise that
she made with her pal Caryn Waechter [WEK-ter]. The three-minute flick can
be seen on Vimeo [VIM-ee-oh], but beware, it's a far cry from the plot-driven movies that most of
Henley's fans are probably accustomed to. In 2019, Henley starred in another short film called Girl,
SWEETVOICED, which is based on the poetry of the Ancient Greek writer
Sappho. Like a true master of her craft, Henley is perfectly happy making
work that she finds artistically rewarding even if it isn't also financially rewarding.
Henley's talents don't stop at just acting and directing. As it turns out, she's also written
and published some poetry. In 2020, she took to Instagram to announce that two of her poems,
entitled "Midtown" and "Vita," were published in an anthology by Cipher Press. The poems were all
about her experience of the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown. As she wrote in the caption,
"I don't think I'm an especially tactile person so was surprised at how much I missed
touch as lockdown progressed, and how certain memories became more like fever dreams."
Two more of Henley's poems, entitled "Encroach" and "Appraisal," were also
published online in 2020 by Clavmag, along with accompanying recordings made by Henley herself.
Additionally, some of her poems were published in the second issue of the poetry journal
Fourteen Poems. It sure sounds like poetry has helped Henley stay busy,
creative, and artistic during a dark time. Who needs a wardrobe to escape
to a fantasy land when you can harness the power of words in the real world?
Henley has made an impact on culture with her film work and poetry, but she's also
done her best to make a positive impact on society at large as well. She's passionate
about mental health, and she's spoken up on multiple occasions about the importance
of acknowledging depression and anxiety. On World Mental Health Day in both 2018 and 2019,
she posted personal and candid notes on Instagram about her passion for mental
health advocacy. In the 2018 post, she offered an uplifting message to her fans as she wrote,
"Look after each other and look after yourself. Progress is not linear,
crying can be as beneficial as laughing, all things will pass."
And in the 2019 post, she expressed her gratefulness for social media
as a platform on which people can open up about their mental
health. She went on to confess that she'd been through some tough times,
but she assured fans that she was learning to be kinder to herself. As she put it,
"We deserve the love that we give to others, we deserve to give that same energy to ourselves."
Henley is also a proud and outspoken feminist, as she frequently takes to
social media to advocate for the power of women. In 2017, for example, she tweeted a
photo of herself wearing a shirt emblazoned with the word "Feminist." She captioned the photo,
"I am a feminist. Today on [International Women's Day], as always, I believe in equality for
ALL women: queer women, trans women, women of colour, disabled women."
Talk about a bold and straightforward attitude about equality! In 2019, Henley
again proclaimed her feminist inclinations, this time on Instagram, where she wrote,
"Today I'm sending love to all the women in my life who are so very wonderful,
to the women who inspire me and have blazed a trail for us all,
and to myself because I'm always my biggest critic and I want to become my biggest fan."
It should be obvious by now that if you don't stick up for women, then Georgie
Henley has something to say to you. Meanwhile, her acting career is still going strong. In 2019,
she starred in the Starz historical drama, The Spanish Princess. That same year it
was announced that she'd been cast in an upcoming prequel series to Game of Thrones,
although by October, news hit that HBO had unfortunately decided to pass on it.
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