Amy McAllister

Amy McAllister is an Irish actress most notable for her role as Mary in hit BBC drama Call the Midwife. She appeared in the Stephen Frears film Philomena, which starred Steve Coogan and Judi Dench.

Background

McAllister grew up in Dublin, Ireland. She trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where productions included Twelfth Night directed by Christopher Luscombe, and Live Like Pigs directed by Christian Burgess and performed at the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square.

Career

McAllister has worked extensively in theatre since graduating from the Guildhall. Recent work includes Scorch by Stacey Gregg (Summerhall Best Actor Award, Fringe First Award, Best New Play at the Irish Times Theatre Awards), Forever Yours Marie-Lou at Theatre Royal, Bath, Hecuba by Marina Carr at the Royal Shakespeare Company,Sons Without Fathers at the Arcola Theatre, White Rabbit Red Rabbit at Live Theatre, Horse Piss For Blood by Kneehigh Theatre writer Carl Grose, No Man's Land, performed in Berlin and in the UK, and The Cherry Orchard, adapted by Tom Stoppard, in which she played the role of Anya. In 2010, she appeared as autistic savant Fanny Haddock in the five star production of A Northern Odyssey, by Shelagh Stephenson. She took on the role of Lyra in the 2009 stage adaptation of Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials, in a co-production with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and the West Yorkshire Playhouse. In 2008, she was highly praised by theatre critics for her performance as Hilde Wangel in The Lady from the Sea, also at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre.^[1]

She has appeared on television as teenage runaway Mary in BBC drama Call the Midwife, as cancer patient Annabelle Taylor in BBC drama Holby City,^[2] and as Della Morgan in Doctors.

Film credits include the Oscar-nominated Philomena and Ruby Strangelove.

Credits

McAllister's other theatre work includes Brighton Beach Memoirs, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Don Juan Comes Back from the War, The Tinker's Wedding, and The Way Home by award-winning writer Chloe Moss.^[3]

Other work

McAllister is also a rising star of the London poetry scene. She is a recent UK Anti-slam Champion and holds the Farrago Zoo Award for Best Feature Debut. Her first poetry collection Are You As Single As That Cream? was published by Burning Eye in December 2014 and her work also appears in Rhyming Thunder, South Bank Poetry Magazine, The Pop Up Anthology, Playerist, and Outwest. She has performed alongside John Hegley, John Cooper Clarke, Inua Ellams, Gerry Potter, Phill Jupitus, and Howard Marks and was one of forty leading female poets selected to read Sylvia Plath's Ariel at the Southbank Centre for the fiftieth anniversary of her death.

References

External links

[1] His Dark Materials, Birmingham Rep, Part 1

[2] IMDb Profile

[3] The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe, Edingburgh Guide

[1]

[2]

[3]