Jodie Comer

In The Bikeriders (2024), Jodie Comer talks fast, flat and through the nose, making Kathy sound amused by both herself and the men she describes. The Chicago accent draws on real recordings, but listen to the judgements inside it. Kathy notices what the men miss and changes her mind while they remain fixed on what they want. Jeff Nichols gives Comer the narration, and she makes it the reason to stay. We learn far more about her than about Benny, the husband she keeps describing.

Her breakthrough came as Villanelle, the assassin in Killing Eve (2018–2022), created by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Comer has described the part as teaching her that acting could be bold and sometimes ridiculous. The Last Duel (2021) took her into period film as Marguerite de Carrouges. In the television film Help (2021), she played the carer Sarah Berner using her own Scouse accent.

In Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later (2025), she plays Isla, who loses track of where she is and then recognises that she has been absent. Comer lets that recognition do the work without pressing us to pity her. She gives a frightening horror film much of its sadness. Our reservations about the closing minutes do not diminish what she contributes.

Michael Sarnoski gets tenderness from her as Sister Brigid in The Death of Robin Hood (2026). We were moved because her kindness made us consider forgiveness for someone the film had given us reasons to distrust. Her warmth gives us something to attend to beyond Robin’s remorse. The script keeps returning to that remorse after the point is clear, and even Comer cannot make repetition feel necessary.

She cannot fix an underwritten part elsewhere in the cast. In The Bikeriders, Austin Butler’s Benny remains a pose however closely Kathy observes him, and Nichols never gives us enough reason for her to stay. Comer makes that failure harder to ignore by making Kathy so much more interesting. Start there for the performance, not for an explanation of the marriage.