Meet Callie Cooke, who plays Jodie in F1: The Movie – the actress appears alongside Brad Pitt and Damson Idris, and rose to fame in her native UK on Cheaters and Doctor Who with Ncuti Gatwa
The rising star’s early influences included TV soap operas and the Royal Shakespeare Company, which she grew up with in Stratford-upon Avon; now she’s broken into Hollywood
Actress Callie Cooke, 31, has come a long way since making her on-screen debut nearly a decade ago in a 2016 episode of BBC’s long-running medical show, Doctors.
She always wanted to become an actress
Raised in Stratford-upon-Avon in England, Cooke revealed in an interview with 1883 magazine that her first introduction to acting came through TV soap operas.
“I was always watching TV and I was blown away by these soap actors that you thought were real people,” she said. “It’s such a comfort thing. Both my parents worked a lot, and it was the one thing that would get us all together on an evening.”
Stratford-upon-Avon is famously the birthplace of William Shakespeare, and Cooke’s fascination with acting was also fuelled by growing up near the home of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC).
“I saw the most unbelievable actors [there], and I always thought it’s what I would work in,” she told 1883.