Romola Sadie Garai (/ˈrɒmələ ˈseɪdi ˈɡæri/; born 6 August 1982) is an English actress. She is known for appearing in the films Amazing Grace, Atonement, and Glorious 39, and in BBC series such as Emma, The Hour, and The Crimson Petal and the White. She has been nominated twice for a Golden Globe Award.

Biography

Garai's great-grandfather emigrated from Budapest to New York in the 1910s with his English-born wife, then moved to London, where he founded the Keystone Press Agency. Most of her Hungarian Jewish relatives were killed in the Holocaust. Garai has mentioned that she has "not yet" been to Hungary and feels modern, cosmopolitan, and British. She lives in London and in 2009 finished her degree in English Literature with the Open University.

Garai guards her private life, saying, "It's too simplistic to say that people start to believe what's written about them. But what happens is that you become a certain way to please people, to be liked, to be what's expected of you, to change yourself so that you become the best possible version of yourself for people who don't know you. And I think that's a terrible, pernicious thing." She adds, "In a way, I'd rather go into an interview and be disliked, and have unpleasant things written about me, than to have a wonderful, glowing article written that is in no way a reflection of who I am."

Garai enjoys travelling and cooking in her spare time, calling it "therapeutic" in many ways. She has visited Hong Kong, Malaysia, Italy, Austria, Morocco, Switzerland and the United States, "To be the outsider for a period of time changes you for the better. It shakes up your comfort level. You have to really make an effort to enter into other people's culture and psychology and language, which the British are very bad at doing."

In November 2012, Garai announced she was expecting her first child with her boyfriend, British actor Sam Hoare. In March 2013, she gave birth to a daughter and they married the following year.

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