Luke Thompson (actor)

Thompson was born in Southampton and brought up in France from the age of two. His father was an engineer and his mother, a teacher. He is one of three children.[2][3] He attended the Lycée International François-Ier in Fontainebleau, a French school with an Anglophone Section, from 1997 to 2005.[4]

Upon returning to England in 2006, Thompson spent a year with the Year Out Drama Company in Stratford-upon-Avon.[5] He studied English and Drama at the University of Bristol and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, graduating in 2013.[6][7]

For his first professional theatre role as Lysander in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Globe Theatre, Thompson received nominations for an Evening Standard Theatre Award and an Ian Charleson Award. He would also appear in the Globe productions of Blue Stockings as Will Bennett, Julius Caesar as Mark Antony, and The Broken Heart as Ithocles. His other stage roles include James in Tiger Country at the Hampstead Theatre, Orestes in the Oresteia at the Almeida Theatre, Laertes in the 2017 production of Hamlet, and Edgar in King Lear alongside Ian McKellen at the Duke of York's Theatre.[8]

From 2014 to 2016, Thompson played Simon in the BBC One drama In the Club.[9] Thompson made his feature film debut with a small role as a warrant officer in Christopher Nolan's 2017 World War II film Dunkirk.[10] He played Peter Hain in Misbehaviour, a film about Miss World 1970.[11] In 2019, Thompson was cast as Benedict, the second eldest Bridgerton sibling, in the 2020 Shondaland-produced Netflix period drama Bridgerton, an adaptation of the novels by Julia Quinn.[12]

• Luke Thompson at IMDb