London is briefly warm. The kind of early spring sun that suggests a shift in season, even if it won’t last. Holly Cattle is making the most of it. When we speak, she’s planning a walk, coffee, and a run later in the day. “My vibe for today is just chill in the sunshine,” she says. “Read my book, drink as much coffee as I can, not too much.”
It’s a pause in what has been a busy period. Over the past year, Cattle’s schedule has accelerated, with projects taking her across continents and into increasingly high-profile work. Best known for her role as Ellie Sutherland in Sky’s Cobra opposite Robert Carlyle, she is entering a new phase of her career, with a lead role in Amazon’s Young Sherlock, directed by Guy Ritchie, and a part in the second season of Disney’s Rivals.
“It’s been a big milestone,” she says. “This year has been pretty crazy, a lot is going on. It’s been busy. It’s involved a lot of flying across the world for the first couple of months of the year. So I’m feeling really grateful, excited and looking forward to catching up on sleep.”
Cattle’s entry into screen work came quickly. Cobra, her breakout role, required her to navigate demanding material while learning the mechanics of television acting in real time.
“That role taught me a lot. I feel like that was a baptism by fire,” she says. “It was six episodes, and my character gets into some seriously dark stuff, and so I feel like I was really thrown in the deep end.”
Much of what she now considers foundational came from that experience. “That role taught me everything that became the basis of my knowledge about film and TV work,” she explains. “I had an amazing director called Charles Sturridge on it, and he would have to break everything down for me from just what the shot is, what certain words meant.”
The learning curve extended beyond performance. “It taught me how to be on set, and also how to do enough work, but not too much, so that you are not stuck in prior decisions,” she says. “And just technically, it taught me a lot in terms of knowing the camera and how that moves and how that affects the work.”
Even the basics were new. “Continuity—that was news to me when I started,” she adds. “My first day was a big dinner scene, and I remember being like, oh my goodness, I have no idea what you mean. I have to put my fork down on the same line every time.”
Her next project, Young Sherlock, marks a shift in scale. The series follows a 19-year-old Sherlock Holmes as he becomes entangled in a murder at Oxford, uncovering a wider conspiracy that alters his path.
For Cattle, the draw was immediate.
“Obviously, it’s Guy Ritchie, who’s a director I’ve always wanted to work with,” she says. “And then also the character was unlike any I’d come across before.”
Her character, Beatrice, disrupts the expectations of her setting. “She totally flips gender norms,” Cattle says. “We’re in an era that is still very much a male world, and she really makes her presence felt in that. She’s terrifying.”
It was the character’s ambition that stood out. “I find it often rare that you read female characters that are so ambitious and ruthless,” she says. “So I just jumped at the chance. Also, so fun being bad. She’s a baddie.”
Working with Guy Ritchie introduced a different pace. “You work really quickly,” Cattle says. “And as a result, it makes the actors really think on the spot, jump into the character and totally trust the script and what we’re doing.”
The process demands immediacy. “He changes a lot of the lines, and that creates a sense of play,” she explains. “It means you kind of just have to be as in the moment as you can. You really see the fruits of that in the final edit.”
“You just trust his vision and trust the process,” she adds. “You have to. You haven’t got a choice. It’s great fun.”
Across her early career, Cattle describes herself as “a sponge,” absorbing techniques from those around her. What has stayed with her is straightforward.
“The one that I come back to the most is just about having fun,” she says. “You can be waking up at four in the morning, doing really hard stuff, but at the end of the day, we’re so lucky to be doing what we love.”
She is currently filming the second season of Rivals, a project that differs again in tone and scale. “They’re very different worlds,” she says. “One’s in the 80s, one is in the 1800s. The content is lighter on one show than another, which means there are different atmospheres at work.” There are structural differences, too. “There’s a much bigger cast on Rivals, which has been so much fun. I’ve never been part of such a big cast, whereas with Sherlock, we were like a small family.”
Before screen work, Cattle trained at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and built a foundation in theatre, including productions at the Donmar Warehouse and Shakespeare’s Globe. Moving between stage and screen required adjustment. “I actually think I’ve had to unlearn some of my theatre background,” she says. “At the beginning, I found it difficult coming from having such a strong theatre background on screen, because we don’t have the same luxury of rehearsal.”
The permanence of film changes the dynamic. “In theatre, once it’s done, it’s gone forever that night,” she says. “Whereas you make a mistake or a choice you don’t love, and that’s there forever on film.” Over time, the two have begun to inform each other. “I feel like I work with greater freedom now on screen,” she says. “And if I could infuse that back into my work on stage, I think that would be complementary.”
Her approach to character begins with the script. “I will always start with the scripts,” she says. “You have an instinct when you’re auditioning, and you have to trust that. And then I’ll read all the scripts and begin my research.” That research is not always used. “Sometimes you can spend ages going down rabbit holes,” she says. “And then it turns out that the detail has been changed, and all that work is not applicable.” As her profile grows, so does the attention. “There’s always pressure in the industry,” she says. “It’s just about finding ways to offset that and stay focused on the work. The work is what really matters.”
She keeps her focus narrow. “I keep my blinkers on a lot of the time. I try to zoom in on the project that I’m doing and the character that I’m working on.” Pressure, she adds, has its uses. “Pressure is great, to be honest. It’s a fine line, but I think it’s a good motivator. Ambition is something you can’t be too short of in this business.”
Her interest in acting has never required much justification. “It’s been the only thing that has never felt like a chore to me,” she says. “I’ve always wanted to be part of every play and every opportunity I could get.” The reasons behind the love of the craft of acting are still a journey. “I’ve been trying to analyse where that came from,” she says. “I still am not there.”
What she does recognise is a consistent thread. “I guess it’s a real interest in people, and a desire to explore them to the nth degree,” she says. “And you can do that and tell stories.”
Like many actors, her motivation is shaped by what she has seen. “We’ve watched something that really moved us, and we’re like, I want to do that to someone else,” she says. “I want to have that impact.” She does not try to resolve it further. “I’m still figuring that out,” she says. “But it’s always been the same, and I don’t think it’ll ever change.”
Looking ahead, she is focused on range. “I want to do something action-packed,” she says. “I would love to work on an indie as well. And I would love to go back to doing a bit of theatre.”
The pull of the stage remains. “Sometimes theatre is like going back to school,” she says. “After a couple of years, you’re like, okay, I need to go back.”
For now, Holly Cattle is moving between projects, adjusting to scale and pace, and building a body of work that continues to expand as she finds answers for her love for acting. The focus, as she returns throughout, remains the same: the work itself.
Photographer Una Burnand
Fashion Tom Pirello
Hair Sophie Sugarman
Makeup Charlotte Yeomans
