Gwendoline Christie

Gwendoline Tracey Philippa Christie[1] (born 28 October 1978)[2] is an English actress and model. She is best known for portraying Brienne of Tarth in the HBO fantasy-drama series Game of Thrones (2012–2019), and the First Order stormtrooper Captain Phasma in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) and Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017). For the former, she received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 2019.

Gwendoline Tracey Philippa Christie was born in Worthing, West Sussex. She has two older half-brothers.[4] Her mother was a housewife, and her father worked in sales and marketing.[1][5] She grew up in a hamlet near the South Downs.[6] As a child she trained as a gymnast but took up acting after a spinal injury.[7] Around 2002, she worked in a boutique in Brighton.[8]

She graduated from Drama Centre London in 2005.[6] She was told she “would probably never work because [she] didn’t look the same as most actors”, due to her unconventionally tall physique, and was even told “well, good luck with that” by her agent after stating she would like to work on screen. She was inspired to continue pursuing this goal by Tilda Swinton’s performance in Orlando. In a 2017 interview, she recalled thinking “Well, she is in a film, she is otherworldly, and is definitely outside the room. … I realised that maybe there is a place for me too.