Rise to Fame
A casting agent caught her audition tape for a different project entirely, which is how she landed the lead in The 100 on The CW without ever technically auditioning for it. She'd done three years on Australian soap Neighbours and ground out small UK roles before the call came. Clarke Griffin ran seven seasons and made history as The CW's first openly bisexual lead character. The show wasn't prestige TV, but it was appointment viewing for a specific generation, and she was the reason people kept watching.
In the Spotlight
The 100 wrapped in 2020 and nothing since has come close. A recurring role as Hannah Carson on NBC's Quantum Leap was the most prominent post-Clarke work. She and husband Bob Morley have been making things together, including the 2023 sci-fi thriller I'll Be Watching, which she executive produced, and his short film Kaitlyn in 2025. The The 100 fandom is still vocal. But a loyal fandom and a career-defining role aren't the same thing, and she hasn't found the second one yet.
Side Notes
She and Bob Morley, her on-screen love interest for seven seasons of The 100, got married in June 2019 and kept it quiet until Morley posted about it on Twitter. The fandom treated it like breaking news. Outside the show's orbit: she co-founded an international primary school on Koh Tao, Thailand, spent her childhood wanting to be a marine biologist, and talked openly in a 2024 podcast about a year-long struggle with postpartum depression after her son was born in 2022.