Renegade Spirit

Jessica Brown Findlay has forged a determinedly off-beat career on stage and screen since ditching Downton. Now she’s back in a frank new costume drama about prostitution – with a feminist agenda.

- Lucy Pavia

Jessica Brown Findlay was 17 and training with the Royal Ballet when two botched ankle operations put the kibosh on her hopes of becoming the next Darcey Bussell. Having danced since the age of two, she was devastated – although she admits the experience taught her something useful. ‘I suppose I learned that putting all your eggs in one basket can be dangerous,’ she says.

This lesson seems to have been applied to Brown Findlay’s career Plan B: acting. She won a major role as Lady Sybil in Downton Abbey, only to walk away at the show’s peak of season three, choosing instead to tackle an almost wilfully eclectic selection of projects. These included Charlie Brooker’s tech drama Black Mirror, the movies Lullaby (where she played a New York lawyer) and Winter’s Tale, a gritty, rain-soaked adaptation of Jamaica Inn for the BBC, as well as critically acclaimed theatre roles in Uncle Vanya and The Oresteia.

We meet at lunchtime in the cafe of Islington’s Almeida Theatre, days away from her opening night as Ophelia in Robert Icke’s production of Hamlet. She’s wearing a red optic-print wrap dress she just bought on a spin around Topshop between long rehearsals. Her thick brown hair is chopped just under her chin and bleached bright blonde. She gives me a friendly hug. ‘I think I’ve killed the hair,’ she says in that distinctively husky, morning-after voice.