1 week Ago By Tianna Corbin
In 2023, actor Bella Ramsey captured the world in the anticipated TV adaptation of the popular game The Last of Us. Playing the role of Ellie Williams, the 21-year-old worked side-by-side with Pedro Pascal, who was Joel Miller in the series. The HBO show follows their journey together as Joel has to escort a teenage Ellie across a post-apocalyptic world.
However, Ellie may be humanity's last hope of survival. Although people were impressed with their role, it wasn't Bella's first time on-screen as they had been acting since a young age. Starting off as a hobby at the age of four, their first credited acting role wasn't until the age of 13.
People first saw Bella take on the role of Lyanna Mormont in the sixth season of HBO's Game of Thrones, in which they appeared for a total of nine episodes. Since then, Bella has starred in the likes of The Worst Witch, His Dark Materials and voiced a character in Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget. With the second series of The Last of Us set to air soon, we're taking a look into Bella's life.
It wasn’t until Bella was filming the first season of The Last of Us that they received their autism diagnosis. However, it wasn’t until a crew member on set spoke to Bella that they decided to seek a formal diagnosis. The crew mwmber, who had a neurodivergent child themselves, spoke to Bella after noticing similar behaviours.
Speaking to British Vogue about their autism, Bella confessed the diagnosis felt ‘freeing’. They said: “The label of being autistic has been so helpful to me because that’s helped me to understand myself, but gender and sexuality-wise, labels do not feel comfy for me in any capacity because I feel like I’m putting myself into a box. I feel trapped.
“It enables me to walk through the world with more grace towards myself about not being able to do the easy everyday tasks that everyone else seems to be able to do.” They also confessed that being hyperaware of mannerismmannerisms has helped them as an actor. When Bella was 14 years old, they appeared in the popular CBBC series, The Worst Witch.
Bella played the role of Mildred Hubble, a student at Cackle's Academy who isn't the best at magic. Bella starred in the show in 2017 and played Mildred for three seasons before deciding to leave before series four, with Lydia Page taking over the role. In the past, the actor has detailed the heartbreaking reason they left.
In an interview with Elle, Bella revealed they developed the eating disorder, anorexia nervosa. The now 21-year-old said they were aware people had speculated they left the show for mental health reasons, although they disagreed with this. Bella said: "I would say the more accurate description is that I had resolved a lot of my mental health problems by that point.
"And then the idea was that, 'I'm not going to do this fourth season because it's not worth it, because I'm in a better place now. This is not something that I want to continue to string out and have the recurring issues that stem from that first season. I don't need or want to do this anymore.
'" Last year, Bella opened up on a phobia they suffer from, which was developed at a young age. The HBO star revealed they suffer from emetophobia, which is a fear of being sick or seeing others be sick. The phobia was once so severe that Bella was unable to leave the house, believing the air around them was a ‘threat’.
While speaking on the Emetophobia-free podcast, they said: “It impacted pretty much every area of my life...
I would be very conscious about what food I would eat on set, worried about if there was a bug going around and who looked ill and who didn’t.” Although they tried to fix the phobia by reading self-help books and doing hypnotherapy, nothing worked. However, Bella is now over their emetophobia and is going through the Thrive Programme for Emetophobia.
. They added: “It’s not controlling my life anymore..
. I don’t think about sick and I’m not scared..
.I don’t have any limits on me anymore in terms of what I can and can’t do depending on this phobia.” The Last of Us Season 2 will air on Sunday, April 13, at 9 PM in the US, with it airing on April 14 in the UK.
