Part of Game of Thrones featuring Emilia Clarke, Kit Harington, Peter Dinklage, Lena Headey, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau.
Rise to Fame
She got the Arya Stark role at 12 in only her second professional audition, beating more than 300 candidates. She'd been training in dance at Bath Dance College, not in an acting program. The part required left-handed sword work to stay in character despite being naturally right-handed. By her mid-teens, she has said she resented the boyish appearance requirements the role demanded. Eight seasons later, she delivered one of the show's most debated kills. You had opinions. Everyone did.
In the Spotlight
Post-GoT, she's been methodically taking roles that look nothing like Arya. Pistol (2022) put her in punk London as Jordan. The New Look (2024, Apple TV+) cast her as Catherine Dior. Neither broke through the way eight seasons of Westeros did, which is the math most actors in her position face. Outside acting, she co-founded Daisie in 2017, a social app for creatives that raised $2.5M in seed funding and hit 100K users within days of launch. The app's staying power is still unproven, but the pivot was a smarter move than most.
Side Notes
Her real name is Margaret Constance Williams. The nickname reportedly comes from The Perishers, a British comic strip character. On The Diary of a CEO podcast, she described her father introducing the family to what she called an abusive cult, and her mother leaving with her siblings when Williams was still an infant. Daisie, the app she co-founded with Dom Santry, combines their first names. The concept was an Instagram-LinkedIn hybrid for creatives, with no follower counts or ads. Naive or principled, depending on your read.