EMMA
MACKEY

Emma Mackey is a French-British actor born in Le Mans, France, on 4 January 1996. She studied English language and literature at the University of Leeds before building a screen career in television and film.

Mackey became widely known as Maeve Wiley in Sex Education, the comedy-drama set around students at Moordale. Maeve’s sharp humour and guarded independence sit alongside her desire for education, friendship and a more secure future.

In Emily (2022), she played writer Emily Brontë in Frances O’Connor’s imagined portrait of the author’s life. The film blends historical inspiration with fiction, giving Mackey a very different setting from the contemporary world of Sex Education.

Mackey received the publicly voted BAFTA EE Rising Star Award in 2023. Her film work also includes Death on the Nile and Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, in which she plays one of the Barbies.

From Maeve to the imagined Emily, Mackey has played characters negotiating expectations around them. The settings and stories differ, but each role gives her space to explore how a person finds an independent voice.