At just 20 years old, few actors can claim to have clocked up as impressive a catalogue of roles at such a young age, from the head of a noble house in Game of Thrones to a disastrous young witch in The Worst Witch to a bad-ass zombie apocalypse survivor in The Last of Us. Bella Ramsey has been hugely successful in their career and has rightly garnered much critical acclaim, but how has being neurodivergent impacted their work?
In a recent interview with The Times, they revealed that the way they experience the world has had a massive impact on their career. They explained, “I don’t know if I’d be an actor if it wasn’t for that.”
Bella Ramsey discovered they were neurodivergent at the age of 18. They believe that whilst this has helped them in their capacity as an actor, it has made daily life more challenging.
“One of my things is I’m very perceptive, sometimes too perceptive. I get paralysed because I just see everything – it takes me four hours to get round Tesco’s”, they explained.
Learning lines can also prove difficult. They disclosed, “I learn them in the car on the way.” However, they credit their heightened awareness of “micro-expressions and social cues” as being of benefit.
They also revealed that learning to live alone has been another challenge, joking, “I didn’t realise how much time was spent putting on washes.”
The non-binary actor‘s most recent role has been somewhat of a departure from their back catalogue. For the first time, they will play a real-world character in the BBC prison drama Time, written by Jimmy McGovern.
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In the second series of Time, Ramsey will play Kelsey, a pregnant woman with a drug addiction. At a recent premiere of the new series, they revealed that they were “terrified” to take on the challenging role.
They explained, “Kelsey was a character that felt more external, that was terrifying. So to be given this opportunity, to be trusted with this character that I didn’t feel like it came naturally to me, it was scary.”
Time is set to air on BBC1 from October 29, 2023 at 9pm.
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