Georgie Henley, who played Lucy in The Chronicles of Narnia franchise, solidified her place
in the pop cultural zeitgeist in 2005 when The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe came
out.
Cast at just 7 years old, she immediately won audiences over, but what has she been
up to in the years since then?
After wrapping production on the Narnia flicks, Henley refocused her energy on her education.
Instead of sticking with a youth in show business, she opted for something closer to a normal
school life, filling time with the occasional small film project.
However, her fame unfortunately made her the target of bullying during her grammar and
secondary school days, which made her feel like she couldn't participate in school theater
at the time.
Henley was able to go on to study English Literature at the prestigious Cambridge University,
where she was less well-known.
There, her sense of newfound anonymity gave her the opportunity to hone her craft and
rebuild her confidence.
During her time at Cambridge, she chose to take time off from her professional acting
and instead focus on theatre work, and learning new techniques of the trade.
As evidenced by her relatively sparse on-screen résumé, Henley has been picky about the
film projects she's taken on and tends to hold out for the right parts, albeit with
mixed results.
In 2014, she returned to the big screen with the crime-drama Perfect Sisters, which wasn't
exactly a hit with critics.
However, she received praise for her performance in The Sisterhood of the Night the following
year, and she later appeared in a lead role in the 2017 music festival comedy Access All
Areas.
Henley's ultimate post-Narnia strategy was to avoid being typecast by experimenting with
different roles, although in an interview for WhatsOnStage, she did admit her gratitude
for the character that made her a star.
She also explained just what type of roles she's looking for, saying,
"I'm lucky that Lucy was a character who was independent, confident and entirely firm in
her own convictions.
I want to avoid being there as a device, so the lead actor can learn something.
I want characters with journeys."
When Henley isn't acting, she likes to keep busy working behind the scenes as a writer
or director.
She first took on these new roles in 2016 with Tide, a short film that focuses on the
relationship between a lesbian couple while exploring their daily lives in a small seaside
town.
In addition to developing a second short film project, Henley also showed her chops as a
writer by successfully publishing a poem.
While Henley has expressed an interest in continuing to act, she's also kept up an interest
in behind-the-camera work.
In an interview with Varsity, she noted,
"You have to convey that you have a story and a message, and that's what I want to do:
whether I'm acting, writing or directing, I want to tell stories that wouldn't otherwise
be told."
While Henley devotes much of her time and energy to showbiz, she's also an activist
who advocates for issues close to her heart, including healthcare, poverty, and human rights.
She's highly engaged on social media, using platforms like Twitter and Instagram to speak
out on various social justice issues and to address her own mental health struggles with
acceptance and self-esteem.
She's also even preached online safety after impostors pretended to be her on social media.
She spoke about how her activism is fueled by anger about the state of the world in a
2018 interview with Theatre Weekly, saying,
"I get angry about so many things I read in the news.
But I think it's good to be angry.
If we stop being angry about what's going on around us then we normalize those injustices."
Henley made her professional stage debut in the world premiere of Philip Ridley's play
Angry in 2018 at the Southwark Playhouse in London.
The show consisted of a series of monologues about different ideas of anger.
Henley and her co-star Tyrone Huntley performed all six monologues, alternating which ones
they did for each performance.
The production itself received mixed reviews, with The Guardian giving it just two stars
out of five.
However, Henley's performance was praised by critics, with WhatsOnStage's review noting,
"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."
The experience proved to be transformative for Henley, who gew more confident in her
abilities as an actress.
“It's cool to be part of something which feels like, you know, is part of a movement
almost.
There is a movement."
Henley has clearly grown up a lot since making her on-screen debut in Narnia, and she's since
remained as busy as ever while balancing her acting, writing, and directorial efforts.
Looking ahead to 2019 and beyond, she's been cast in the Starz mini-series The Spanish
Princess, and she's also set to appear in HBO's Game of Thrones prequel series.
While the world waits for these highly anticipated shows to premiere, Henley herself shows no
signs of slowing down.
She told WhatsOnStage in 2018,
"My entire career at the moment is about wanting to learn more!
I just want to be this big porous sponge and soak up everything and then ask all the right
questions afterwards."
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