Kelly Reilly is an English actress. Reilly was born and brought up in Surrey, England, the daughter of a hospital receptionist mother, and Jack Reilly, a police officer. Her grandparents were Irish. In 2010, Kelly met Kyle Baugher in Marfa, Texas, and they married in Somerset, England in 2012.
Career[]
Inspired to seek acting work beyond school, she wrote to the producers of the television drama Prime Suspect and six months later was granted and won the audition, for a role in an episode Prime Suspect 4: Inner Circle, which aired on ITV on May 7, 1995. Six years later, she once again appeared alongside Helen Mirren in the film Last Orders.
Her first professional role was followed by a series of parts on the English stage. She worked with Terry Johnson in four productions,Elton John’s Glasses (1997), The London Cuckolds (1998), The Graduate (2000) and Piano/Forte (2006). Johnson wrote Piano/Fortefor her and said "Kelly is possibly the most natural, dyed-in-the-wool, deep-in-the-bone actress I've ever worked with." Reilly has stated that she learned the most as an actor from Karel Reisz, who directed her in The Yalta Game in Dublin in 2001. She said, "He was my master class. There is no way I would have been able to do Miss Julie if I hadn't done that play."
By 2000, Reilly felt she was being typecast in comedy roles and she actively sought out a role as the young Amy in Last Orders, directed by Fred Schepisi. This was followed by a role in the Royal Court Theatre's 2001 re-run of Sarah Kane's Blasted. The Times called her "theatrical Viagra". In 2002, she starred alongside Audrey Tautou and Romain Duris as Wendy, an English Erasmus student, in the French comedy L'Auberge espagnole ("The Spanish Apartment"). She resumed her role in the 2005 sequel, Les Poupées russes ("The Russian Dolls"). Also in 2005, she had a series of roles in such films as Mrs Henderson Presents and Pride & Prejudice.
Her first lead role came in 2008 in the horror film Eden Lake and, in 2009, she had a high-profile role on prime time ITV1 British television in the three-part police drama Above Suspicion. That year she was also in three major films, Sherlock Holmes (2009 film), Triage, and Me and Orson Welles. In 2011, she reprised her role as Mary Watson in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.
In 2012, she appeared opposite Sam Rockwell in A Single Shot, played Brendan Gleeson's character's daughter in ohn Michael McDonagh's Calvary, and had a leading role in Robert Zemeckis' Flight, opposite Denzel Washington.
Awards and nominations[]
Reilly's performance in After Miss Julie at the Donmar Warehouse made her a star of the London stage and earned her a nomination for a Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best Actress of 2003. Aged 26, she was the youngest person ever nominated for that award. In 2005, she won Best Newcomer Award at the Cannes Film Festival for her role as Wendy in The Russian Dolls (Les Poupées Russes). In 2006, Reilly won the Empire Award for Best Newcomer for her role in the British comedy film, Mrs Henderson Presents. She was nominated once again for an Olivier award for her performance as Desdemona in the acclaimed production of Othello at The Donmar Warehouse in 2009. Kelly was nominated for Best Supporting actress at the British Independent film awards for Eden Lake in 2010. She won the Spotlight award at the 2012 Hollywood Film festival, for her performance as Nicole in Flight.
External links[]
- Kelly Reilly on the Internet Movie Database.