How Adolescence star Erin Doherty went from making the tough decision between drama and football to accepting her Golden Globe in front of Hollywood heavyweights
Standing on the podium in an elegant Louis Vuitton gown, clutching her golden statuette, Erin Doherty looked out on a sea of legendary actors and Hollywood heavyweights.Stars including Leonardo DiCaprio and Julia Roberts applauded as Doherty accepted a Golden Globe for Best Female Actor in a Supporting Role as child psychologist Briony in the Netflix hit Adolescence – her biggest and most celebrated performance since starring as Princess Anne in The Crown.Yet while she looked just as glamorous and polished as Tinseltown’s other A-listers on Sunday night, her earthy, Estuary accent belied her background. In truth, Doherty’s ordinary beginnings have made her stratospheric rise to fame all the more extraordinary.Unlike many of her privately educated contemporaries – Lily James went to Tring Park School, Florence Pugh to Wychwood, Josh O’Connor to St Edward’s, Cheltenham – Doherty, 33, attended comprehensive Hazelwick School in Crawley, West Sussex.Similarly her Adolescence co-star Stephen Graham, 52, went to Kirkby High School, a comprehensive in Merseyside, while Owen Cooper, 16, is studying for his GCSEs in his native Warrington.Just last week Doherty revealed that comedian Romesh Ranganathan was her head of sixth form at Hazelwick, where he worked as a maths teacher before launching his comedy career.She grew up in a modest two-bedroom house in Crawley - last sold for £262,000 in 2014 - on Princess Road, West Green, with her mother Nichola – a receptionist - and sister Grace. Erin Doherty accepted a Golden Globefor the Best Female Actor in a Supporting Role as child psychologist Briony in the Netflix hit Adolescence Doherty, 33, attended comprehensive Hazelwick School in Crawley, West Sussex‘The house in this street is the first house that we were in: me, my mum, and sister,’ she said in a video filmed by Netflix.‘Growing up in Crawley is the same as anywhere else.’‘She didn’t have a huge amount of friends,’ said her mother Nichola in the clip. ‘Just one friend really, Amy.’Her parents were divorced and she spent weekends with her father, who worked at nearby Gatwick Airport, and would drive her to football practice and onto acting classes on Sundays.Doherty was a talented young footballer, who played for Crawley Wasps and was even scouted by Chelsea Women. But, at 13, her father told her she had to choose between her passions for sport and drama.Although it was a tough decision, she eventually picked acting, as did her sister Grace who has appeared in Casualty and in West End shows including Made in Dagenham.Aged 18, Doherty’s approach to acting changed after travelling to Bosnia for the Mostar YouTube Theatre Festival with her drama teacher Guy Williams in 2010.‘We did a piece of work that kind of caught fire,’ he said of the original group piece they had created. ‘And that led to, “Okay, we could go actually, we could go there and we could do a piece,”’ he added. The Netflix show, made by Sheffield-based Warp Films, took home four trophies, including for Best Limited Series and Best Supporting Actor at the 83rd Golden Globes Erin Doherty as Princess Anne 'The Crown' TV Show Season 3 in 2019 Doherty was a talented young footballer, who played for Crawley Wasps and was even scouted by Chelsea Women. But, at 13, her father told her she had to choose between her passions for sport and dramaDespite travelling for the festival, Doherty admitted that it wasn’t until she got on the flight home from Bosnia that she made the decision to pursue acting seriously.‘The trip kind of fed my soul in a way that you can’t unlearn. Bosnia genuinely made me consciously go, “Okay, this is it now.”’She added of Mr Williams’ involvement: ‘Teachers have the power to change your whole path in life and I genuinely feel like he changed mine.’But without the financial support and connections that her privately educated contemporaries undoubtedly had, she struggled to get a foot in the door.To pay the entry fees for auditions and drama school, Doherty took a job at her secondary school washing PE kits and pumping up balls, persevering despite receiving multiple rejections.‘She paid £200 a time and she got regularly knocked back,’ said her mother Nichola.‘It was horrible. I cried because I thought, “Where do we go from here?”’Doherty has herself said that she believes her accent and ‘background’ were ‘picked up on’ at certain points, but that only fuelled her ambitions. Doherty’s Golden Globe comes after winning the 2025 Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress, along with a Critics Choice Award win, both for her role in Adolesence Doherty admitted that when she puts on her received pronunciation accent - used to play Princess Anne(pictured) - she gets served more quickly at coffee shops‘[It was] something that was picked up on, that you’re from a certain background,’ she told the Evening Standard last year.‘But if anything, I probably leaned in even harder, because I was like, “This is who I am.”‘Part of being an actor is that you are a chameleon. You become different people. So why would I need to change who I am in order to be able to do my job?’Last month, Doherty admitted that when she puts on her received pronunciation accent - used to play Princess Anne - she gets served more quickly at coffee shops. She told The Observer: ‘There’s an authority to voices like that. And whether we like it or not, you respond differently.’After a year-long acting course at the Guilford School of Acting, Doherty got into the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in 2012.Following a series of small roles in Call the Midwife in 2016 and the BBC adaptation of Les Misérables, she landed the part of Princess Anne in The Crown in 2019 following a rigorous audition process, for which she trained herself to mimic the Royal’s speech by watching clips of her on YouTube.Film roles soon followed: Firebrand, playing Anne Askew, an English writer and Protestant preacher, opposite Alicia Vikander as Catherine Parr and Jude Law as Henry VIII, and Reawakening with Jared Harris and Juliet Stevenson.Theatre roles included The Crucible at the National Theatre and The Death of England, as well as a television role in the Disney+ show A Thousand Blows. To pay the entry fees for auditions and drama school, Doherty took a job at her secondary school washing PE kits and pumping up balls, persevering despite receiving multiple rejectionsNext, she will appear in Hugo Blick’s new BBC drama California Avenue, alongside Bill Nighy and Helena Bonham Carter.Seemingly comfortable in the spotlight, Doherty recently spoke candidly about her relationship with her NHS radiographer girlfriend Sinead Donnelly, revealing that they had moved in together.‘I’m such a romantic. I hate saying goodbye at the end of every day,’ she said on Fearne Cotton’s Happy Place podcast this week.‘People say it’s like a cliche lesbian thing, where you immediately move in, so we held on as long as we could.‘I tried to make it as non-cliche as possible, but I just love her. So at the start of [last] year, I moved in with her and it’s been the craziest year of my life.’Doherty’s Golden Globe comes after winning the 2025 Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress, along with a Critics Choice Award win, both for her role in Adolesence.There is no denying that Doherty has earned her place among the A-listers in front of whom she so confidently spoke at the Golden Globes. It now seems that her journey from Crawley to California is complete.
