Miss Austen star Synnøve Karlsen's famous family and life off-screen

Synnøve isn't the only big name in her family as her aunt is film producer Elizabeth Karlsen and her uncle is the filmmaker and actor Stephen Woolley. Their joint production company Number 9 Films is behind a string of critically acclaimed films, including Made in Dagenham, Carol, Colette and Living. 

Speaking about her upbringing, the Glasgow-born, Helensburgh-raised star told The Scotsman in 2019: "I was lucky because we were always pushed to watch films and discuss them. And since I've been an actor my aunt and uncle are great people to ask advice about scripts and work relationships, they're amazing. Although what I do is totally different."

Synnøve, who has an American mother and half-Norwegian father, moved to London with her family when she was 12 and would spend her summers in Norway. 

The actress, whose name is pronounced 'Sin-er-va', now lives in London. Sharing her love for the city, she told Fabric: "I have lived here for 10 years and then longer with my family growing up. I feel so grateful to be able to live in a city where you can walk out the door and have so much at your fingertips."

Synnøve landed her breakout role in the BBC's 2017 psychological thriller Clique, bagging the part of Holly McStay when she was 19.

She dropped out of her three-year course at Guildhall School of Music and Drama after being cast in the show. "I dropped out after a year, because I ended up getting the role in Clique, which was my sort of breakout role, I guess," she told Fabric. "So, it was all quite fast; looking back, I'm like wow, it all happened quite quickly. It happened in a bit of a different way for me, and I’m so grateful that I just took the opportunities when they came."

Since then, she's starred in Edgar Wright's acclaimed horror, Last Night in Soho, as well as the Netflix thriller, Bodies, and the historical drama, Medici.

While Synnøve likes to keep her relationship out of the spotlight, she did reveal that she likes to go on holiday with her boyfriend when she's not working.

When asked how she unwinds after wrapping up a big project, she told PIBE Magazine: "I usually just want to come home and get into bed – where I usually remain for a week or so. Then, if there's an opportunity, I like to take a trip away with a friend or my boyfriend."

Miss Austen marks the second time Synnøve has worked with Keeley, having played her on-screen daughter in the Sky drama, The Midwich Cuckoos, in 2022.

Opening up about their off-screen relationship, Synnøve told Harper's Bazaar that she sees the Bodyguard star as a "mentor". "We're really close," said the actress. "I see her as a mentor. We both just knew that we would be able to slide into these roles and bring [the story] to life together – but in quite different ways."

Synnøve added to Country & Townhouse that she and Keeley have an "unspoken trust" of each other. Explaining why she and the Spooks star didn't do much "planning and mapping" of their characters in Miss Austen, the Clique actress said: "Because Keeley and I know each other so well and we've worked together before, there was an unspoken trusting of each other and what we were doing."

She later added: "Keeley and I have played mother and daughter before, so we've got a familiarity with each other that felt really easy to slot into. It felt like we trusted each other to go off and have our own stab at that character, which we’ve hopefully married together in a real way."