Kate Ellen O'Flynn (born 1985) is a British actress. She is the recipient of a number of accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award as well as nominations for a Laurence Olivier Award and British Academy Television Award.
On stage, O'Flynn is known her roles in the National Theatre productions of Port (2013), for which she won a Critics' Circle Theatre Award, and A Taste of Honey (2014), and The Glass Menagerie (2016–2017) at the Duke of York's Theatre, for which she was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role in 2017.
On television, O'Flynn had roles in the ITV series Doctor Thorne (2018), the Sky Atlantic series Landscapers (2021), the Channel 4 series Everyone Else Burns (2023–2024) and the Amazon Prime series My Lady Jane (2024). She currently stars in the Apple TV comedy horror series Widow's Bay (2026), for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award. Her films include Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) and Bridget Jones's Baby (2016).
Contents
Early life and education
Born in Bury, O'Flynn grew up on Hunters Green in Holcombe Brook. She is of Irish descent. Her father was a dentist, while her mother Clodagh was a French-language teacher at Tottington High School who was active in amateur dramatics as a longterm member of the Summerseat Players.
O'Flynn attended Bury Grammar School, completing her A Levels in 2003. As a teenager, she took part in school productions and followed her mother in joining the Summerseat Players as well as Manchester's Royal Exchange youth theatre. O'Flynn went on to train at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Acting in 2006.
Career
O'Flynn's first professional role was in Mike Leigh's 2008 film Happy-Go-Lucky. Later that year, her performance in The Children's Hour with the Royal Exchange Theatre Company won her the 2008 TMA Theatre Award for Best Supporting Performance in a Play, with The Guardian writing "the one to watch is the outstanding newcomer Kate O'Flynn."
In 2009, Kate O'Flynn starred in the comedy-drama TV series Kingdom, with Stephen Fry, as Emily Cartright, council solicitor and girlfriend of trainee solicitor Lyle Anderson, played by Karl Davies. In the same year, O'Flynn appeared with Russell Tovey at London's Royal Court Theatre in Molly Davies' A Miracle. Michael Billington gave the play 3 stars out of five in his review for British newspaper The Guardian, finding that "Kate O'Flynn's Amy is a model of gawky despair" but concluding that the cast "fill out a play that provides plenty of evidence of youthful talent but that also leaves you wanting more". In the Evening Standard, Nicholas de Jongh praised O'Flynn's "beautiful rendering of passivity, selfishness and vulnerability", while The Daily Telegraph's Charles Spencer wrote, "Kate O'Flynn brings an astonishingly raw vulnerability to the stage as Amy, the tears streaming down her face as she describes how impossible she finds it to love and nurture her child".
O'Flynn appeared as Elizabeth Gough in the 2011 television film The Suspicions of Mr Whicher and as Liz in the British feature film comedy Up There, which was the winner of the Best Feature Film award at the 2012 British Academy Scotland Awards and was broadcast on BBC Two in August 2015. In 2012, O'Flynn played the role of Beryl in BBC Four's BAFTA Award-winning television adaptation Room at the Top, based on John Braine's novel of the same name.
In 2013, she performed at the National Theatre in its production of Port. Writing in The Guardian, Maddy Costa noted: "As Rachael [sic] in Simon Stephens's Port, she grew from a mouthy 11-year-old to a downtrodden but resilient 24-year-old – and in the process transformed from a relative unknown to a star in the making". Her performance won her the Critics' Circle's Jack Tinker Award for Most Promising Newcomer (other than a playwright). She returned to the National Theatre, playing Jo in its 2014 production of Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey.
In 2014, O'Flynn appeared in her second Mike Leigh film Mr. Turner. She would then go on to appear in another of Leigh's films, Peterloo, in 2018.
Personal life
Jonathan Bailey, who starred alongside O'Flynn in the play The House of Special Purpose (2009), calls her his "all-time bezzie". The pair also hiked to the Everest base camp in Nepal together in 2018.
