Fans of Lord of the Rings will be pleased to know that the hotly anticipated Amazon Prime series, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, will be on our screens in just over week, hitting the streaming platform on September 2. The upcoming fantasy series is set thousands of years before J.R.R Tolkien's 'The Hobbit' and is based on the author's history of Middle Earth.
The series has a strong Welsh cast, with Owain Arthur and Trystan Gravelle. Welsh actress Morfydd Clark also appears in the series as a young Galadriel, an Elven warrior. Some of you might recognise the Penarth-raised actress, who's appeared on both the big and small screens over the past few years - even winning awards for her work.
Born in Sweden, Morfydd moved to Penarth when she was two years old, and her parents and sister still live in Wales. She is fluent in Welsh, and has said that being bilingual has helped her in her acting career.
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"Being bilingual also helps in terms of learning lines and going to Welsh language school you do so much singing and reciting. As well as my dad singing Irish folk songs to us. It sets me up well for Shakespeare and stuff," she previously told WalesOnline. She added that two members and a cast member on The Rings of Power are also speakers, allowing her to keep up her Welsh on set.
Morfydd left school when she was 16-years-old, joining youth theatres before going on to do her A Levels in English and Maths at Kings Monkton school in Cardiff. She won a place to study a three-year course at the Drama Centre London, but left in her final term to star in a production of the Saunders Lewis play Blodeuwedd with Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru.
Morfydd has a number of impressive theatre credits to her name, having appeared in plays at the Royal Court Theatre, the Donmar Warehouse, and The Old Vic in London, as well as Sheffield's Crucible Theatre. She made her first appearances on screen back in 2014, starring alongside Mia Wasikowska in Madame Bovary and alongside Florence Pugh and Maisie Williams in The Falling.
The same year, she also appeared in the TV film A Poet In New York, which explored poet Dylan Thomas's death in New York at the age of 39. In 2016, Morfydd went on to star in the film Pride and Prejudice and Zombie's playing Georgiana Darcy, the little sister of Matt Smith's Mr Darcy.
Period drama fans might well recognise Morfydd from the number of films and TV shows she's starred in, including Love and Friendship, The Man Who Invented Christmas, and The Personal History of David Copperfield. She's also got a number of horror credits to her name.
She starred in American horror film, Crawl, which also featured Skins' Kaya Scodelario, as well as the BBC production of Dracula. However, her appearance in Rose Glass's psychological horror Saint Maud saw her win two awards for her performance. Morfydd's performance gained her recognition across the world, with critics describing it as critics as "a hallucinogenic, holy nightmare" and "one of the best British debuts of all time."
Morfydd might be most recognisable, however, as Sister Clara, of the Magisterium in BBC and HBO’s His Dark Materials, based on Phillip Pullman's popular novels - a series which the actress was able to film in Wales. She previously told WalesOnline: "I was in my favourite books, being done by HBO and I’m in Wales speaking Welsh to the director, those worlds I never thought would collide.”
Now, she is set to star in her latest TV series, Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, and she's continuing to flex her Welsh muscles while promoting the show. Morfydd recently left American talk show host, Stephen Colbert impressed by teaching him the Welsh alphabet.
The long-awaited series also stars Maxim Baldry (Years and Years), Robert Aramayo (Game of Thrones) and British actor and comedian Lenny Henry amongst others. For more showbiz and television stories get our newsletter here.
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