Rose Leslie

Rose Leslie
Information
Date of birth	9 February 1987
Birthplace	Aberdeen, Scotland, UK
Role	Ygritte
First episode	"The Old Gods and the New"
Last episode	"The Children"
External links
IMDb

"I personally love her so much because she's a lot of fun. She's feisty and she doesn't take crap from anybody... And the fact that she's a strong woman. There are so many powerful female characters in the series."

―Rose Leslie on playing Ygritte

Rose Leslie (born Rose Eleanor Arbuthnot-Leslie on 9 February 1987 in Aberdeen) is a Scottish actress. She spent three years studying at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, graduating with a BA Honours degree. She is best known for playing the role of Gwen in the first season of the highly successful drama series Downton Abbey, a role which allegedly contributed to her casting on Game of Thrones. Leslie is descended from Scottish nobility, and grew up in her family's ancestral castle- ironically, her Game of Thrones character has never even seen a castle.

Game of Thrones

In Game of Thrones Leslie is playing the role of Ygritte. She was confirmed in the role on 10 October 2011. She joined the cast as a guest star for the second season. Benioff and Weiss specifically considered Leslie due to her performance on Downton Abbey.

After being cast, Leslie dove into the books, and was on book four by the start of Season 3. She also took archery lessons, so it would look more realistic when Ygritte handles a bow. She later specified that after being cast she read as much as she could to research the role, and got up to book four by the time she began filming in Season 2, though she was too busy afterwards to finish reading the rest of book four as well as the recently released fifth novel. Either way, Ygritte dies at the end of the third novel, so she finished reading the ones relevant to her character. As a result Leslie knew how Ygritte would die even before she began filming.

As is common practice on medieval productions, Leslie didn't actually fire arrows from her bow most of the time, but instead mimed pulling back and releasing her bowstring, and the arrows are added in digitally. This allowed her to "fire" arrows much faster than a real person actually could. The major reason for doing this is the fear that an actor firing even a prop arrow might accidentally hit someone. Particularly, it would have been dangerous to actually fire an arrow in scenes where Ygritte is shooting someone at close range, not just across a field.

Actors commonly film their scenes in any given season out of order, i.e. the producers want the new character's introduction scene to work particularly well so the audience receives them well, so they often film their introduction scene near the end of filming, after the actor has had more time to get comfortable in the role. This was not, however, the case with Rose Leslie: her first scene playing Ygritte also happened to be the first scene that Ygritte is introduced in, Season 2's "The Old Gods and the New". Moreso, she also has the distinction of filming Ygritte's first scene first, and ultimately filming Ygritte's final scene last: Ygritte's death scene in Season 4's "The Watchers on the Wall" was also the final scene that Rose filmed. As she explained at the San Diego Comic-Con 2014 panel she felt it was very fortunate that it was also her last day filming, because her death scene in Jon Snow's arms was so emotionally draining that it would have been difficult to subsequently come back and film scenes from earlier episodes in the season.

After Leslie finished filming her final scene, weapons master Tommy Dunne presented her with a case containing Ygritte's bow for her to keep.

Credits

Guest starring

Template:Season two credits

Starring

Template:Season three credits Template:Season four credits

See also

• Rose Leslie on Wikipedia
• Rose Leslie on IMDb
• Rose Leslie interview October 2011 video