Kaya Scodelario

Kaya Rose Scodelario-Davis (née Humphrey; born 13 March 1992) is a British actress. She first came to prominence co-starring on E4's Skins (2007–2010, 2013), receiving two Golden Nymph nominations for her portrayal of Effy Stonem. She then took on leading roles in a variety of films, such as Wuthering Heights (2011), the Maze Runner series (2014–2018), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017), Crawl (2019), and Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021). In 2024, she starred in the action comedy series The Gentlemen and limited biographical drama series Senna.
Scodelario was born Kaya Rose Humphrey on 13 March 1992, in Haywards Heath, West Sussex. Her mother, Katia Scodelario, is a Brazilian who had worked as an accountant in Itu, São Paulo, and had moved to England in 1990; Scodelario's surname comes from her mother's Italian grandfather. Her father, Roger Humphrey, was English and died in November 2010.
Her parents divorced when Scodelario was one year old, and her mother took her to London when she was four. They spent their first night on the street before finding a council flat on Holloway Road. Scodelario took her mother's surname and spoke Portuguese at home. She attended St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School, Highgate Hill and she attended Bishop Douglass Catholic School and then Islington Arts and Media School. She participated in school plays and found drama an escape from bullying. Her mother took on multiple jobs to make ends meet and had clinical depression that worsened during Scodelario's teen years. Scodelario said she wanted to help, but did not know how, and moved to a flat in Camden.
In 2006, at age 14 and with no acting experience, Scodelario was cast in the first series of Skins as Effy Stonem. At the auditions, she became discouraged as she felt she was too young, but a producer told her to stay and she was asked to read for the part. While Scodelario's role in the first series had minimal speaking lines, her character developed considerably during the second series. She eventually became the central character in the third and fourth series after the cast had been replaced by a new generation of characters. This made Effy one of the only characters to appear from series 1 all the way through to series 4. Filming began in July and Scodelario said that 18 November 2009 was her last day of filming the series and that she would miss being on the show.
Critics praised her performance, and she was nominated twice for Best Actress at the TV Quick Awards, in 2009 and 2010. In the episode "Fire", one of three parts of the seventh (and final) season of Skins, Scodelario reprised the role of Effy. It is a two-part depiction of her life as an adult, lasting two hours. She claims "Fire" is "more like a movie" and that she could relate to Effy's struggle to change from a teenager into an adult.
Scodelario made her film debut in the science fiction-thriller film Moon, which premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, receiving positive reviews. In her second film, Shank, released on 26 March 2010, she played teenager Tasha. In addition, she appeared in the 2010 remake of Clash of the Titans as Peshet.
In April 2010, Scodelario confirmed her casting as Cathy in an adaptation of Wuthering Heights directed by Andrea Arnold. The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2011 to generally positive reviews, and Scodelario was hailed as a "heart-wrenching revelation". Wuthering Heights also played at several other international film festivals, including the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival, the London Film Festival, and the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.
In 2011, she signed on to play Sally Weaver in a British thriller, Twenty8k. The film was released in September 2012. In late June, Scodelario announced that she had signed on to star in Now Is Good with Dakota Fanning. The film is based on Jenny Downham's novel Before I Die, about a teenage girl with leukaemia who makes a list of things to do before she dies. She portrays Zoey, the protagonist's best friend. In September 2011, Scodelario filmed a television serial for BBC One, True Love, an improvised series comprising five stand-alone episodes, each covering a different love-related dilemma. She is cast in the third storyline as Karen, the love interest of her teacher, portrayed by Billie Piper.
In January 2012, Scodelario made her first American film, The Truth About Emanuel, in Los Angeles. She stars as the title character, Emanuel, a troubled 17-year-old girl who babysits her new neighbour Linda's "baby", which is actually a very lifelike doll. It had a limited release on 10 January 2014. In April 2012, Scodelario shot a cameo appearance for the film Spike Island. She also participated in an advertising campaign for Korean jewelry brand J. Estina. In 2013 she starred in the four-part Channel 4 drama series Southcliffe, which tells the story of a fictional English town devastated by a spate of shootings, exploring the tragedy through the eyes of a journalist and those close to the victims.
She signed on to the film franchise The Maze Runner in April 2013 as the lead female character, Teresa, in the first film, based on the novel of the same name by James Dashner. It was released in September 2014, and its sequel, Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, in September 2015. She filmed the lead role in the film adaptation of The Moon and the Sun in 2014, but the film was not released until 2022, under the title The King's Daughter. She starred in the home-invasion thriller Tiger House, released in 2015, and also had a starring role in the sequel Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, which was released on 26 May 2017.
Scodelario reprised the role of Teresa in Maze Runner: The Death Cure. The film was set for release on 17 February 2017, but after her co-star Dylan O'Brien was injured on set, it was pushed back to 26 January 2018.
The year 2019 brought new projects for Scodelario. The first, released in May, was Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, about serial killer Ted Bundy; she portrays his wife, Carole Ann Boone. She played the lead in Alexandre Aja's horror film Crawl, which was released in July to positive reviews. Her next film, 2021's Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, saw Scodelario lead another horror film, this time portraying video game character Claire Redfield as a main protagonist.
Scodelario then signed up to lead a new Netflix series, an edgy figure skating drama called Spinning Out in 2019. Debuting in early 2020, the series explored multi-person mental illness within a family and its interaction with high-level competitive sports.
In spring 2019, Scodelario became the face of Cartier's new jewelry line, Clash de Cartier, and filmed the latest Agatha Christie miniseries adaptation, The Pale Horse, for Amazon and BBC. In August 2021, Scodelario joined dramedy Don't Make Me Go being developed under Amazon Studios, and filmed This Is Christmas the next summer. Scodelario filmed two series for Netflix in 2023: The Gentlemen, inspired by the Guy Ritchie film of the same name, and Senna, a biographical drama about the Brazilian Formula One driver Ayrton Senna, where she played a fictional, though important character of a reporter called Laura Harrison. She will next star in the Netflix thriller film The Woman in Cabin 10.
Scodelario dated her Skins co-star Jack O'Connell for about a year before they split up in June 2009, remaining good friends. She was in a relationship with Elliott Tittensor from late 2009 to early 2014. During their relationship, she supported Tittensor after his arrest for hitting someone while driving an uninsured car.
Scodelario and Benjamin Walker began dating during the filming of The King's Daughter in early 2014, becoming engaged in December 2014 and marrying in December 2015. Both adopted the surname "Scodelario-Davis" (Walker's full name was Benjamin Walker Davis). Their first child, a son, was born in November 2016. Scodelario's Skins co-star Daniel Kaluuya, who grew up in the same neighbourhood as her, is her son's godfather. On 18 September 2021, Scodelario announced she was pregnant with her second child. In December 2021, she gave birth to a daughter. In February 2024, the couple announced they had separated.
She was voted 13th in the UK edition of FHM's 100 World's Sexiest Women 2010.
In January 2018, Scodelario revealed that she had been sexually assaulted when she was 12 years old.