Part of Game of Thrones featuring Emilia Clarke, Kit Harington, Peter Dinklage, Lena Headey, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau.
Rise to Fame
She auditioned for Sansa Stark as a joke, at 13, with her school friends daring her to go. Game of Thrones ran from 2011 to 2019, which means she grew up on screen, working through every stage of adolescence while playing a character the show treated terribly for most of its run. Her Emmy nomination in 2019 for Outstanding Supporting Actress confirmed what critics had noticed for years: she was doing the actual heavy lifting while everyone else got the flashier material.
In the Spotlight
The divorce from Joe Jonas in 2024 gave tabloids more material than her entire filmography combined, but Turner came through it by pivoting back to England. Joan (2024) on ITV, where she played real-life jewel thief Joan Hannington, earned her the best reviews of her career and an 81% on Rotten Tomatoes. The Tomb Raider series for Prime Video, with Phoebe Waller-Bridge writing, puts her in franchise territory that has nothing to do with Game of Thrones, which might actually be the point.
Side Notes
Turner has been open about depression, anxiety, and an eating disorder she says social media helped trigger during her Game of Thrones years, adding that therapy 'saved her life.' She's moved back to the UK permanently following the divorce, settled custody of her two daughters, and seems more interested in work she controls than in the kind of fame that nearly broke her. The Lara Croft casting suggests she's done playing characters defined by suffering.