Freya Mavor

Freya Mavor (born 13 August 1993) is a Scottish actress and model. She is best known for playing Mini McGuinness in the E4 teen drama Skins.

Mavor was born in Glasgow but grew up in Inverleith, Edinburgh. Her father, James Mavor, is an award-winning playwright who leads the MA screenwriting course at Napier University. Her grandfather, Ronald Bingo Mavor, was The Scotsman's theatre critic in the early 1960s before he became the director of the Scottish Arts Council. Her great-grandfather, James Bridie (real name Osborne Mavor), changed the Scottish theatrical landscape by setting up in 1950 a college of drama, the forerunner of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. Mavor's mother is Irish, and has some Danish ancestry.

Mavor first became interested in acting after watching The Shining when she was 10 years old. For a period, she lived in La Rochelle, France. She studied at Collège Eugène Fromentin in La Rochelle and at Mary Erskine School in Edinburgh, and has been a member of the National Youth Theatre since 2008. Her first acting experience was in school productions of Shakespeare’s The Tempest as Miranda and in The Merchant of Venice prior to a stint in the National Youth Theatre.

In 2011, Mavor made her professional debut as Mini McGuinness in the fifth and sixth series of E4 drama Skins, after originally auditioning for the role of Grace Blood. She described her character as "quite a feisty and witty figure, but she doesn't really think about the consequences of her actions". For her role, she was nominated for Best Actress at the TV Choice Awards 2012.

Mavor became the face of Pringle of Scotland for its 2011 spring/summer campaign. She also won the Fashion Icon of the Year Award at the 2011 Scottish Fashion Awards.

In 2013, Mavor played Nicola Ball in the romantic comedy Not Another Happy Ending. It was first screened at the 2013 EIFF Closing Night. The film is about a writer suffering from writer's block and her publisher’s campaign to get her writing again. In the same year, she appeared as Liz in Sunshine on Leith, an adaptation of a stage musical based on the lyrics of The Proclaimers, first screened at TIFF 2013. In 2015, she starred in Joann Sfar's French film The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun (La Dame dans l'auto avec des lunettes et un fusil) alongside Benjamin Biolay and Italian actor Elio Germano.

On television, Mavor portrayed Princess Elizabeth of York in the 2013 period drama The White Queen for BBC One. Later that year, she joined Will Merrick in stage production Boys at the Arcola Theatre in London. Mavor's next television role was in Channel 4 historical miniseries New Worlds. She played Jamie Dornan's love interest in a 17th-century story set in England.

Mavor has two brothers, Hugo and Alex. She can play the piano. In 2005, she was a mezzo-soprano at the National Youth Choir of Scotland. She was voted 78th in the UK edition of FHM's 100 World's Sexiest Women 2012. In 2013, Screen International named her as one of the UK Stars of Tomorrow.

Film

Television

Stage