Sophie Lowe

**Sophie Lowe** is an English-born Australian actress and singer-songwriter. She appeared in the films *Beautiful Kate*, *After the Dark*, *Adore*, and *Road Kill*, and starred in the television series *Once Upon a Time in Wonderland*, *The Slap*, *The Returned* and *The Beautiful Lie*.

## Early Life

Lowe was born in Sheffield, Yorkshire, and moved to Australia with her family in 2000. In her early teens, she signed to Chadwick Models but quit modelling in favour of acting.

## Career

Lowe's first roles were the short films Kindle, in which she played the lead role Hayley; Mirage, which was screened at the Montreal World Film Festival, and He. She. It., as well as a number of television advertisements before she graduated from The McDonald College in 2008.

Lowe's first substantial role was as the lead, Kate, in Beautiful Kate, which was released in 2009. For her role in Beautiful Kate, she was nominated for an AFI Award for Best Lead Actress. Her other credits include Natalie in the thriller film Blame, which was released in 2010. Blame was screened and received accolades at Cannes Film Festival, Melbourne International Film Festival, the 35th Toronto International Film Festival, the 47th Chicago International Film Festival and Buenos Aires International Film Festival of Independent Cinema.

In 2013, Lowe and her fellow McDonald College alumnus Rhys Wakefield co-wrote, co-directed, and starred in the short film A Man Walks Into a Bar... The film was a finalist at Sydney's Tropfest short film festival. Lowe and Wakefield previously worked together in the 2013 film After the Dark.

From 2013 to 2014, Lowe starred as Alice in Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, a spin-off of the TV series Once Upon a Time. The series ended after one season.

On 2 June 2014, Lowe was cast in the role of Lena in The Returned.

In 2015, Lowe starred in The Beautiful Lie, an Australian television series broadly based on Leo Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina, playing Kitty Ballantyne, and filmed Waiting for the Miracle to Come, the feature film debut of Australian documentary filmmaker Lian Lunson. On 2016, she joined the independent Australian film Bloom,and Philip Noyce's thriller Above Suspicion.

Lowe is also a singer-songwriter, originally performing under the alias SOLO. In December 2013, she released a five-song EP named after her alias, released by the online music retailer Bandcamp. The music video for the song "Dreaming", one of the songs from the SOLO EP, was directed by actress and After the Dark co-star Bonnie Wright. She later dropped the SOLO name and performed under her real name.

Speaking to the media in October 2015, Lowe said she had a two-fold focus. When she had free time between acting, she tried to do as much music as she could. She stated that she would not give up acting for the sake of her burgeoning musical career. "There's no way I'm not acting," she said, "because that's my life."

## Trivia

* Learned to drive a Ute, (pickup), fire a rifle and ride a motorbike while making the feature Beautiful Kate.
* Quit school after she was cast in Beautiful Kate (2009).
* Made her catwalk debut, leading the catwalk parade for MIMCO at the L'Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival (2013).
* She was tested for the female lead in Endless Love (2014), a remake of Endless Love (1981) starring Brooke Shields. She and four other actresses flew to Hollywood to meet the director and read opposite Brenton Thwaites, who was considered for the male lead. Neither Sophie or Brenton were cast.
* She has two tattoos, one of a tiny line, and one with M&D (Mum & Dad) between two of her fingers.