Romola Garai

Biography: Romola Garai is the daughter of a banker and a former journalist. She has an older brother, Ralph, and two sisters, Rosie and Roxanne. Her great-grandfather was Bert Garai, a Hungarian journalist who founded London's Keystone Press Agency.

Romola grew up in Hong Kong and Singapore until she was eight, when her parents took her to Calne, in the west of England. She later spent three years at Stonar School, Atworth, where she learnt to play the violin and was called 'Romster', then two years at the City of London School for Girls, with theatre studies as one of her subjects. At eighteen, she passed three 'A' levels. She acted in many school plays and sang in a jazz band. A casting agent got her a leading role in the BBC film Last of The Blonde Bombshells while she was still at school. Next, she got a part in a British TV show, Attachments. She then took the first year of a University of London degree course in English literature, but abandoned it as her acting career took off.

Romola's family name, Garai, comes from Hungary. Her long term ambitions lie in directing and writing for the theatre. … Expand