Nicola Coughlan

Nicola Coughlan is an Irish actress from Galway who studied at the National University of Ireland, Galway and trained at drama schools in England, including the Oxford School of Drama. She had an uncredited part as a child in the thriller My Brother's War (1997) and later did voice work in animation, among it Thor: Legend of the Magical Hammer (2011). She became known for playing Clare Devlin in Derry Girls, Channel 4's sitcom, from 2018 to 2022, and Penelope Featherington in the Netflix drama Bridgerton from 2020, a role that earned her a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination. Her West End debut came in 2018 in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and she went on to appear in the film Barbie (2023) and the comedy Seize Them! (2024). She received a British Academy Television Award nomination for the sitcom Big Mood.