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Bella Ramsey often feels more comfortable around older people. The actor, 22, who is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, has been working professionally since they were 11, when they got their first TV job as the child noblewoman Lyanna Mormont in Game of Thrones. For half of their life, they have been in adult environments, talking to adults, working with adults. Even so, the London cafe in which Ramsey has chosen to meet makes any retirement home look like a creche. It is full of old men with their dogs, popping in for a cup of tea and a morning chat.
“It feels like it belongs in the Midlands. It feels a bit, like, shit and familiar,” says Ramsey, who grew up in the East Midlands and can say that with affection. Their curly hair is short, pushed back off their face, and they have a single gold hoop in one ear. The plan had been to go for a walk this morning, but it is raining so we have a cup of tea and wait for the drizzle to pass. Ramsey seems both younger and older than 22, depending on the moment. Sometimes, within a single sentence, they sound ancient and wise, and also like a bookish teenager, discovering with amazement how they think they might feel about the world.
Perhaps this, too, is a result of being on film and television sets for so long. Legend has it that Ramsey’s character in Game of Thrones was only supposed to be in a single scene, but their performance was one of pure grit, and they remained in the show for three seasons, almost until its bitter end. That grit took another shape in Lena Dunham’s charming medieval comedy film Catherine Called Birdy, in which they played a young English noblewoman scheming to reject the suitors who wanted to trap her, and it appears again in the British prison drama Time, in which Ramsey was a pregnant heroin addict. But it was HBO’s massive, dystopian drama The Last of Us, an adaptation of the popular video game, that made them a name internationally.
Ramsey was cast as its young lead, Ellie, an orphan who, in the midst of a zombie-like apocalypse, joins forces with Joel (Pedro Pascal), who becomes a father figure to her. When it first aired in 2023, Ramsey and Pascal found themselves at the centre of one of the year’s most successful and hyped new shows. The duo became the object of parasocial ardour, with fans rooting for their cross-generational friendship, and both were nominated for every acting award going – Ramsey for two Emmys, two Golden Globes, two Critics Choice awards, an Actor award and a Bafta.
Ellie is a complex character, brittle and petulant, yet Ramsey’s performance gives her vulnerability and heart. As with Time and Game of Thrones, the actor has a knack for conveying rough-edged softness, for young women who mask their inner turmoil by fronting up to the world.
In person, Ramsey seems so earnest and gentle that it is easy to forget just how much they have done over the past 10 years. One benefit of working so hard, for so long, is that they have been able to buy their first flat, close to where we’re sitting today, on the edge of a lovely park in a suburban area of London. They have been unpacking boxes this morning. “I feel like this cafe might become my regular eating spot,” says Ramsey. “They also do jacket potatoes, which is my favourite thing. No one does jacket potatoes any more, properly.”
Ramsey feels guilty about the fact that they have bought a flat at 22. “It feels very wrong! You’re not supposed to do that until you’re older.” The flat is small, cosy, one-bedroom, and they are living alone, happily. Their thoughts about it unspool at length, as they talk out the good and the bad, each argument undulating softly, taking its turn. Ramsey often seems as if they are in discussion with themselves, carefully weighing up both sides of a point before they decide to make it.
“I’ve done it a bit early. I started working when I was 11 and I’m now 22, so it’s been 10 years, and I guess people maybe start working when they’re 21 and then buy a house when they’re 31, so I don’t know. Buying a house is impossible now, and it’s only because I ended up in this industry, that pays people too much money, that I’ve been able to do it.” They take a breath. “It just feels like a glitch in the system. I feel so embarrassed by it.”
Living alone suits Ramsey; they need it. “Else I sort of become almost less of a person. I become whoever I’m around, in a way. I just meld to the people around me.” Is that a people-pleasing thing? “I think so, but it’s also an everything thing.” For example, they say, right now they are looking at me, so they can’t see themselves. “In my head, it’s like you’re the only one who’s here. So, yeah, I don’t know. It’s an interesting thing that I’m just beginning to understand.” I am not quite sure I do understand, but it sounds like an excess of empathy. It also sounds as if Ramsey relishes being alone, and being alone is not common when they are working. “It’s really nice to be able to come home and just be me and I’m not having to worry about how anyone else is feeling.”
Ramsey prefers to keep their family’s lives private, and does not want to specify where they come from in the East Midlands, but it sounds rural and remote. “It was quite specific and wonderful.” School was a drive away, and it wasn’t the kind of place where you could walk to a friend’s house, or vice versa, so they kept themselves busy with after-school clubs. When they were 10, they auditioned for the Television Workshop in Nottingham, the young actors’ group that has been called the working‑class Rada, and which counts Samantha Morton, Jack O’Connell, Vicky McClure and Felicity Jones among its attenders. Ramsey failed to get in the first time, but was invited back to re-audition at age 11. “And then I got in. It was such a good lesson. For your very first introduction to be a rejection, I think, is perfect.”
Did they audition because they wanted a career in acting? “No! I definitely didn’t go there with that in mind.” The Workshop is firm about that not being the point of the group, and Ramsey insists that they only took part for their own enjoyment. “And then I started to get auditions for things. And even then, I never thought about it as being a career. It was just fun, and then when it did become my career, and everyone started calling it that, I found it very strange, and still do.” Can they call it a career now? “Nooo,” Ramsey says, cringing a little. “Feels wrong.” Maybe in time? “I mean, it has definitely been an experience that is now feeling like work, which it hadn’t when I was younger.”
Ramsey seems to have escaped the notorious curse of the child star. They seem nice and normal, in so much as it can be normal that 32 million people watched them in the season one finale of The Last of Us. As a child, they were protected from some of the industry’s cruelties, yet, ever the pragmatist, they suggest that such protections were both good and bad for them. Take The Worst Witch, an adaptation of the beloved children’s books by Jill Murphy. Ramsey was 11 when they were cast as Mildred Hubble, the main character. They were not allowed to have a parent chaperone them on set – “I think to avoid pushy stage parents,” they say today. “But it was terrible for me. I’d never been away from home, even for a sleepover. I didn’t like school trips. I wanted to be around my parents. And then I was away from home for 16 weeks, over the summer. Home at weekends, but in a hotel room by myself [while working], at age 11.”
The young cast were looked after by professional chaperones, but, as the lead, Ramsey felt the weight of responsibility. “I was put in an interconnecting room with one who was 10 and told that I was to help look after her,” they recall. At the time, that felt fine. “I felt like I could just do it. I didn’t feel that young.” And now? “Now I look at 11-year-olds, and I’m like, God, you’re tiny.” People like to ask Ramsey if they feel as if they missed out on having a traditional childhood. “I think some of the freedom and innocence of it, sure. But I was having so much fun. I didn’t want to be anywhere else other than on set.” They loved acting, loved being part of something. “It was one of the worst times and the best times of my young little life. I guess it sealed the thing that was already there, of being older than I was.”
Recently, for the first time since The Worst Witch, Ramsey found themselves acting with a group of their peers. In the film Sunny Dancer, they play a teenage cancer survivor called Ivy, who heads off to summer camp with other teenagers who have had, or who have, cancer. Ivy is angry at the world, and feels isolated by what she has been through. It is a sweet, wonky coming-of-age film, with a very British eye on the teenage experience. There is banter, there is sex in a tent, and there is a lot of vodka being swilled from the bottle.
“I was so nervous that I’d be on the edge of things, and that they’d all get along really well, and that I’d be the odd one out, or not as included,” Ramsey admits. They have spoken before about being miserable at school and not fitting in with people their own age. “I’ve always felt slightly on the outside, too old and too young at the same time,” they say today, which makes sense. They were more comfortable around adults, yet their silliness and sense of fun seemed childish to their schoolmates. “It’s probably a neurodiverse thing as well,” they say. Ramsey had long suspected that they were neurodivergent, and received a formal diagnosis when filming the first season of The Last of Us. “I just felt like I couldn’t access anyone, or that people couldn’t access me. I just felt a bit strange.”
Sunny Dancer sounds as if it was liberating for Ramsey. “As I’ve got older, I’ve found people my age easier. I think everyone levelled out.” The film’s cast was effectively living out a version of the summer camp that they were depicting on screen. “Everyone got on with each other in slightly different ways, and started to annoy each other a little bit, in a familial, sibling way. It was so fun.” There is a lot of drinking in the film. Ramsey once said that they had never been drunk. Is that still the case? “I’d say I’ve got a little bit closer to that,” they reply, coyly. “Maybe a little bit happy? But I’ve still never had a hangover.” Suddenly, Ramsey sounds exactly like a 22-year-old.
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The film was supposed to be the last time that Ramsey would play a teenager. “It was going to be my final big bang,” they say. But they’re playing another one, in Maya, a new thriller for Channel 4, in which Ramsey stars as a teenage girl forced into a witness protection programme with her mother, played by Daisy Haggard, who also writes and co-directs the series. “I really thought that I wanted to move away from that, but then, also, I’m only going to be able to play teenagers for a very limited amount of time in my life. I may as well, if they’re interestingly written.” It has been produced by the company behind The Tourist and Fleabag, so may well be worth that brief return to adolescence.
It sounds as if Ramsey is as busy as ever, then, but right now they’re not filming anything at all. They are writing a TV series, which they can’t yet talk about, and working on music with friends. “I really don’t want to just be an actor who makes music. I really want them to be separate,” they say. They are taking it seriously. “I don’t want people to listen just because it’s me.” Later in the summer, they will go back to Vancouver for the third and final season of The Last of Us. Filming has already begun, but Ramsey’s services are not yet needed. Ellie is absent from the story for a period of time, as the focus has shifted to her nemesis, Abby, played by Kaitlyn Dever.
Ramsey has enjoyed this time off. “I was getting to a place where I’d done a bit too much and was starting to not enjoy it, a bit, and not feel inspired, and feel a bit resentful of it.” They never wanted to feel that way about acting. “I couldn’t do that, for my 11-year-old self. It was their favourite thing in the world. So I took a step away, and now I am really excited to go back and I miss it.”
They can’t talk about what is coming up in The Last of Us, not because of any restrictions, but because they have yet to see the scripts. During season one, their friendship with Pascal became a fan favourite. Ramsey called Pascal “Pedge”. Pascal called Ramsey “Bellie”. For plot purposes, he was barely in season two. Are they still in touch? “Yeah. But, like, yes, loosely in touch, yeah. But it feels like an entirely separate thing.” Their friendship has been endlessly clipped and memed – him calling Ramsey his “blessing”; Ramsey talking of their “deep-rooted connection” – and when the topic comes up, Ramsey has the look of someone who has been asked about it several thousand times before. “People get invested in the characters,” they say, but now seems weary of the fuss and won’t go any deeper. “I’m not sure. It’s sort of weird to talk about it … Let’s move on to a different topic.”
It is still wet outside, but it feels like we need a change of scene. “I’m like a dog: I need to be walked,” says Ramsey. “If I don’t walk in a day, I feel it. I have to move my body somehow.” They have sturdy boots and an outdoorsy jacket, so we decide to go for a stroll through the rain. Ramsey turned 18 while making the first season of The Last of Us. It sounds as if that time was a transformative one. It was when they realised that they were neurodivergent. It was when they talked about their gender identity. In 2023, they told the New York Times that their gender “has always been very fluid” and that they would tick a box marked “non‑binary”, if asked.
Ramsey has always talked about this with sensitivity and nuance, but they say now that they feel they weren’t given enough warning about how much of a talking point it might become. Just before press for The Last of Us began, they were asked which pronouns they would be using. “I’d expressed being in the middle.” For Ramsey, it was just a “helpful descriptor. And then suddenly it became a huge thing, where it’s, like, this is your identity and it’s who you are. I wasn’t aware of the impact of that, both positively and negatively. But I think the positive impact outweighs the negative, in terms of being visible or giving a name to an experience.”
They remain relaxed about pronouns. “Like, people will see me and they’re going to go ‘she’ because, of course, I would. I accidentally misgender people. It’s a thing that even I have to learn. There’s a misconception that if you get someone’s pronouns wrong, they’re going to be offended and it’s a big thing. It’s just not a big deal as long as you’re respectful, and I think if somebody does correct you, then you respect that and you try your best. And so I’m pretty chill about it.”
What is different now is that their family also uses they/them pronouns for them. “I just think it feels the most accurate, is all that it is. They’ve been lovely about it. They always got a free pass, but it started to be weird because everyone in my life was calling me ‘they’ except them, and they know me the best. They were, like, maybe we can just try. And so it’s very sweet, hearing them try.” Again, they say, they are very laid‑back about it. “I understand why it has become such a thing that people want to talk about and talk to me about, but it really is just a descriptive word for part of my experience of being in the world.”
In the same interview, Ramsey also said that they were not 100% straight. “I said something about being a bit wavy,” they laugh. “I mean, I think most people are, slightly. Like, who knows who you’re falling in love with, you know? You just meet a person and you fall in love with them, and that’s kind of all there is to it.” What has your experience of that been, so far? “I’ve experienced it and I just think it’s a beautiful part of life.” I ask if they’re in love now. “I’m not talking about that!” they say, squirming a little, like the teenager that they have only recently been.
Ramsey may have enjoyed some time off recently, but managed to fit in filming the second series of The Celebrity Traitors, alongside a pleasantly eccentric cast, including Miranda Hart, Richard E Grant, Maya Jama and Ross Kemp. They said yes to doing it because they love the party game Mafia, on which the show is loosely based. “I started playing it in the Television Workshop, so I’ve been playing it since I was 11. I love it so much. I’ve done Mafia nights at my flat. So fun. In my head, it was just, like, I’m going to go to this castle and play this game for two weeks.” Had they seen the first series? “Yeah. So I’m, like, you just go and you do that. But I’m too naive. I should know, after doing this for so many years, that what you see on screen isn’t actually what it is,” they say, with a smile.
Are they nervous about it coming out? “No, not really.” A pause. “Well, actually, I might try to be out of the country,” they say, laughing. They are aware that it will bring them attention, and for the most part, right now, they can wander around the park, with the old men and the dogs, without many second glances coming their way. “So the idea that I’m going to be more famous for a bit … ” they say, and taper off.
Ramsey has learned, over the past decade, that fame is fleeting and it comes and goes. “Suddenly everyone recognises you and you’re famous for two weeks, and then there’s somebody else. So it will be a bit of a thing for a few weeks and then people will move on, you know?” They say this with the wisdom of an old hand, someone who has been at this for a long time already. “So I’m not too worried,” they say, sweetly, and set off home, to unpack more boxes.
