---
name: "Emma Mackey"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/emma-mackey"
fi1m_id: "emma-mackey"
imdb_id: "nm8076281"
tmdb_id: 2201315
wikidata_id: "Q60590137"
roles: ["Actor"]
born: "4 January 1996"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 2
average_fi1m_score: 77
average_as: "actor"
average_over: 2
updated: "2026-10-21T04:04:05.546886+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Emma Mackey

## Identity

Emma Mackey

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/emma-mackey
- **Type:** Person
- **Fi1m ID:** emma-mackey
- **IMDb ID:** nm8076281
- **TMDB ID:** 2201315
- **Wikidata ID:** Q60590137
- **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Mackey, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60590137, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm8076281/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/2201315

Actor. Born 4 January 1996 in Le Mans, France.

## Details

- **Work:** Actor
- **Born:** 4 January 1996, Le Mans, France
- **Active:** 2019–present
- **Also known as:** Emma Tachard-Mackey, Emma Margaret Marie Tachard-Mackey
- **Frequently works with:** [Greta Gerwig](https://film.one/person/greta-gerwig.md)
- **Average Fi1m score:** 77, as actor, over 2 titles
- **Fi1m score by decade:** 2010s 78 (1), 2020s 76 (1)
- **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Mackey, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60590137, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm8076281/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/2201315

## Coming up

- *Narnia: The Magician's Nephew* (2027-02-10), as Jadis / The White Witch
- *The Great Beyond* (2027-09-29)

## Streaming the US now

- **Netflix:** [*Sex Education*](https://film.one/tv/sex-education.md) (78)
- **HBO Max:** [*Barbie*](https://film.one/film/barbie.md) (76)

For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country.

## Fi1m on Emma Mackey

> Emma Mackey's gift is to look tired and clever at once, rarer than it sounds. It made Maeve Wiley the one person in *Sex Education* who seemed to have somewhere else to be; film has not yet found her a part as good.

Watch Mackey in the toilet block in *Sex Education* (2019), listening to Asa Butterfield's Otis explain something he has read about and never done. Everyone else in Laurie Nunn's school is performing at full volume: Ncuti Gatwa's Eric dresses like a firework, Gillian Anderson's Jean interrogates teenagers over toast. Mackey does almost nothing. She stands still, she looks slightly worn, and she waits for the boy to finish. Teenagers on television are allowed to be angry, funny or heartbroken; Mackey plays Maeve as something rarer, which is tired.

It was her first professional job, taken with an English degree from Leeds and no drama school behind her, which may be why there is so little visible acting in it. She stayed with Maeve for four seasons, from 2019 to 2023, and the show was better in its first two than its last two, though that was Nunn's problem rather than hers. Film came in the gaps: *Eiffel* (2021), Kenneth Branagh's *Death on the Nile* (2022) as Jacqueline de Bellefort, then a first lead in *Emily* (2022) as Emily Brontë, where the reviews noticed what we had noticed in the toilet block, a directness that makes a period character look like someone you could argue with. We have not reviewed *Emily* and will not judge it. The casting sounds right.

*Barbie* (2023) is the one film of hers we have reviewed, and it barely counts. Greta Gerwig bills her in the top ten as one of the Barbies and gives her, along with Issa Rae, Hari Nef and Sharon Rooney, perhaps a dozen lines between the four of them. A film about women being able to be anything gave most of its women little to be, and Mackey was one of them. She has said of the shoot, "I learnt so much. It was life-changing." We believe her. We could not see it on the screen.

The pattern so far is that she is cast as the clever, independent girl, the one who has read the book and is not impressed, and she is good at it. The risk is that a part built on reacting leaves her stranded when the writing thins, and the reviews of *Ella McCay* (2025), her first title role, found the character hard to believe and too often reacting to other people. We were moved by Maeve more than a school comedy set in a toilet block had any right to manage, and it was the tiredness that did it, the sense of a girl already paying for things her classmates had not yet noticed cost anything. That is the note nobody else has asked her to play again.

Gerwig has cast her a second time, as the White Witch in her Narnia. It is the first part anyone has offered her that is not a version of the girl who knows better, and a villain worn down by her own winter would be a good use of what she has. Until then, the first two seasons of *Sex Education* are where to find her.

## Biography

Emma Mackey, also credited as Emma Tachard-Mackey, is a British-French actress. Born Emma Margaret Marie Tachard-Mackey on 4 January 1996 in Le Mans, France, she moved to England to study English language and literature at the University of Leeds, graduating in 2016.

Mackey first gained prominence for her role as Maeve Wiley in the Netflix series *Sex Education* (2019–2023). She has since appeared in films including *The Winter Lake* (2020), *Eiffel* (2021), *Death on the Nile* (2022) as Jacqueline de Bellefort, *Emily* (2022) as Emily Brontë, and *Barbie* (2023) as Physicist Barbie. In 2023 she won the BAFTA Rising Star Award.

*Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.*

## On Fi1m (2)

- *Barbie* (2023), Fi1m 76, as Barbie — [page](https://film.one/film/barbie.md)
- *Sex Education* (2019), Fi1m 78, as Maeve Wiley — [page](https://film.one/tv/sex-education.md)

## Complete filmography (16)

Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page.

- *The Great Beyond* (2027), Actor
- *Narnia: The Magician's Nephew* (2027), as Jadis / The White Witch
- *Full Phil* (2026), as The Girl From The Marais
- *Ella McCay* (2025), as Ella McCay
- *Alpha* (2025), as Nurse
- *Hot Milk* (2025), as Sofia
- *Hotel Fantasma* (2025), as Amélie · Associate Producer
- *Barbie* (2023), as Barbie — Fi1m 76, [page](https://film.one/film/barbie.md)
- *Emily* (2022), as Emily Brontë
- *Death on the Nile* (2022), as Jacqueline de Bellefort
- *Eiffel* (2021), as Adrienne Bourgès
- *The Winter Lake* (2020), as Holly
- *Tic* (2019), as Jess
- *Sex Education* (2019), series, as Maeve Wiley — Fi1m 78, [page](https://film.one/tv/sex-education.md)
- *Badger Lane* (2016), as Michelle
- *Peaked*, Actor

## Gallery

- ![Emma Mackey](https://film.one/media/person/452/gallery-faa961a2e8fe.jpg) Emma Mackey — Martin Kraft, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/78/MKr385780_Emma_Mackey_%28Alpha%2C_Cannes_2025%29.jpg/1280px-MKr385780_Emma_Mackey_%28Alpha%2C_Cannes_2025%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Emma Mackey on a press-tour for Sex Education, January 2019](https://film.one/media/person/452/gallery-78c8825b5802.jpg) Emma Mackey on a press-tour for Sex Education, January 2019 — MTV UK, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Emma_Mackey_MTV_UK%2C_January_2019_2.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)
- ![Emma Mackey at Berlinale 2025](https://film.one/media/person/452/gallery-a489c3921640.jpg) Emma Mackey at Berlinale 2025 — Elena Ternovaja, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/42/Emma_Mackey_at_Berlinale_2025.jpg/1280px-Emma_Mackey_at_Berlinale_2025.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Close-up of beautiful Emma Mackey at TIFF 2022 after press conference for movie Emily](https://film.one/media/person/452/gallery-e0a998138168.jpg) Close-up of beautiful Emma Mackey at TIFF 2022 after press conference for movie Emily — Peter Kudlacz, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b4/Emma_Mackey_at_the_2022_TIFF_Premiere_of_Emily_%2852353972512%29.jpg/1280px-Emma_Mackey_at_the_2022_TIFF_Premiere_of_Emily_%2852353972512%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Emma Mackey](https://film.one/media/person/452/gallery-82631c15a823.jpg) Emma Mackey — Image via TMDB
- ![Emma Mackey](https://film.one/media/person/452/gallery-6d161e999478.jpg) Emma Mackey — Image via TMDB
- ![Emma Mackey](https://film.one/media/person/452/gallery-84de30252621.jpg) Emma Mackey — Image via TMDB
- ![Close-up of beautiful Emma Mackey at TIFF 2022 after press conference for movie Emily](https://film.one/media/person/452/gallery-fec501570ba7.jpg) Close-up of beautiful Emma Mackey at TIFF 2022 after press conference for movie Emily — Peter Kudlacz, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Emma_Mackey_at_the_2022_TIFF_Premiere_of_Emily_%2852353972512%29_%28cropped%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)
- ![Emma Mackey et James L. Brooks à l'avant-première d'"Ella McCay" à l'Arlequin, le 29 avril 2026.](https://film.one/media/person/452/gallery-2075e60ebc16.jpg) Emma Mackey et James L. Brooks à l'avant-première d'"Ella McCay" à l'Arlequin, le 29 avril 2026. — ManoSolo13241324, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7e/Emma_Mackey_et_James_L._Brooks_2026.jpg/1280px-Emma_Mackey_et_James_L._Brooks_2026.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Emma Mackey](https://film.one/media/person/452/gallery-ed16fb10afb8.jpg) Emma Mackey — Image via TMDB

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/emma-mackey