Incredible Women Of 2024: Actor Mia McKenna-Bruce
MIA McKENNA-BRUCE is next in our Incredible Women of 2024 series – in which we celebrate the trailblazers whose talent, energy and impact are defining the year. After winning her Rising Star Bafta award last month, thanks to her striking performance in the British indie film How To Have Sex, she speaks to KATIE BERRINGTON about roles that drive conversations, and why it’s been a year of major change
There was a personal reason that made Mia McKenna-Bruce determined to land her Bafta-rewarded role in How To Have Sex. “I have a 16-year-old sister and a 21-year-old sister – and I was, like, I need them to see this film. One way to make sure they watch it is to try and be in it.”
She “would have loved to have had a film like this” when she was younger, she continues of its importance. The compelling coming-of-age drama – writer-director Molly Manning Walker’s debut – follows a group of teenagers on a frenzied post-exam vacation to Crete, and examines the thorny issues surrounding consent, with sobering frankness and ultra-realistic insight, as well friendships and uncertain futures. The film had its world premiere at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Un Certain Regard prize. And one year on, McKenna-Bruce remains as impassioned talking about the film now as she was when the press tour first started.
She secured the lead role of Tara after a self-tape and then meeting with Manning Walker. “She was everything you could dream of – and more – in a human being,” the actor enthuses about the writer-director. “Just how honest she wanted to be with [the film] was something that I was, like, ‘We need that.’”
“I knew it was something that would resonate with a lot of people.” The audience response has been “bittersweet… It’s amazing getting to start these conversations, but it also reaffirms how present [these topics are] for so many people.”
“I was really emotional [when the film was released], because a lot of my friends were messaging me being, like, ‘I needed this’. It's so sad that so many people do need it.” She is hopeful about the discussions that it is propelling forward, though – paying testament to Manning Walker’s ability to “not block anyone out from the conversation. That’s how you begin to change things.”
McKenna-Bruce saw some of herself in Tara, who she portrays with quiet and heart-breaking precision. “She's trying to live up to the expectations that everyone has of her – and that’s something I can relate to so much.” Having started acting as a child, McKenna-Bruce didn’t spend much time at school. “So when I was there, I’d be the class clown, desperate to make everyone like me – just wanting to do what everyone else wanted me to do. I could have done with a Tara to see on screen. I think she embodies so many young people.”
“I have dreamt of being in rooms like that for as long as I can remember… To actually stand up and talk in a room in front of all these people who I look up to so much – it’s just pure insanity to me
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How To Have Sex is Mckenna-Bruce’s biggest job to date, but she also had a scene-stealing role in 2022 Netflix period drama Persuasion, as the dry-humored younger sister of Dakota Johnson’s lead. It was working alongside Richard E. Grant, who played their father, that made a particular impression on her work ethic. “Seeing someone who has been in the industry as long as he has still turn up day after day fully in love with what he does. I’d love to be able to do that, too.”
On the horizon is the undated short drama Sister Wives, written and directed by Louisa Connolly-Burnham, about two women who are bound together in a fundamentalist society – and who begin to develop romantic feelings for each other. McKenna-Bruce is committed to taking on roles and projects that “get conversations going… Female-led, exciting stories that need to be told.”
Her career ascent hasn’t been the most significant life change of the past year, however. McKenna-Bruce welcomed her first child, Leo, last summer. She was back on the press circuit for How To Have Sex six weeks after giving birth. “Getting to bring him into this crazy world has been magical, because it’s these two dreams I’ve had coinciding with each other.”
“It’s a wild time, but it was just the best way that I could have done it… The scariest thing when he was born was a part of me that was, like, ‘How can I be me now that I’m a mom? Where do I get Mia from?’ Then jumping back into doing what I love so much, I was, like, we can do all of this at the same time.”
The day we speak, her Bafta nomination for the Rising Star Award has just been announced (“Have you seen the list?!” she gushes over her fellow nominees – Ayo Edebiri, Phoebe Dynevor, Jacob Elordi and Sophie Wilde). She went on to triumph in the category, visibly stunned and emotional as she accepted the accolade. Just attending the Baftas has been a long-time aspiration.
“I have dreamt of being in rooms like that for as long as I can remember,” she says. “To actually stand up and talk in a room in front of all these people who I look up to so much – it’s just pure insanity to me.”
There’s another big event on the cards this year, too – she’s getting married to her long-time boyfriend and Leo’s father, fellow actor Tom Leach. At work and at home, there’s lots to be excited about, she says – and laughs about the current order of priority in her life: “Baby, Baftas, wedding.”