Sophie Ward

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Sophie Ward
Born	Sophie Anna Ward (1964-12-30) 30 December 1964 (age 59) Hammersmith, London, England
Occupation(s)	Actress and writer
Years active	1974–present
Notable work	Love and Other Thought Experiments (2020)
Spouse	Paul Hobson ​ ​ (m. 1988; div. 1996)​ Rena Brannan ​ (m. 2014)​
Children	2, with Paul Hobson
Parent(s)	Alexandra Malcolm and Simon Ward
Website	sophieannaward.com

Sophie Anna Ward (born 30 December 1964)^[1] is an English stage and screen actress, and a writer of non-fiction and fiction. As an actress, she played Jocelyn Sheffield in The Nanny, she also played Elizabeth Hardy, the female lead in Barry Levinson's Young Sherlock Holmes (1985), and in other feature film roles including in Cary Joji Fukunaga's period drama Jane Eyre (2011), and Jane Sanger's horror feature, Swiperight (2020). In 1982 she had a role in the Academy Award-winning best short film, A Shocking Accident. On television she played Dr Helen Trent in British police drama series Heartbeat from 2004 to 2006, the character Sophia Byrne in the series Holby City from 2008 to 2010, the role of Lady Ellen Hoxley in the series Land Girls from 2009 to 2011, and that of Lady Verinder in the mini-series The Moonstone (2016). She has had a variety of other roles on stage and in short and feature films.

Ward returned to higher education, earning a PhD from Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2019, in English and Comparative Literature, focusing on the intersection between literature and philosophy, including the use of narrative and thought experiments in philosophy, the philosophy of mind in particular. She has written for The Guardian, The Times, and The Spectator, won the 2018 Royal Academy Pin Drop Award for her short story "Sunbed", and had her first novel, Love and Other Thought Experiments (2020), longlisted for both the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Booker Prize in its publication year. She and her wife, Korean-American poet and writer, Rena Brannan, divide their time between England and the United States.^[2]