Luke Thompson (actor)
Luke Thompson, is an English actor. He is best known for his role as Benedict in the Netflix period drama Bridgerton, and has also appeared in the BBC One drama In the Club. In 2024, he received a Laurence Olivier Award nomination for his performance in the stage adaptation of ''A Little Life.''
Early life and education
Luke Thompson was born on 4 July 1988 in Southampton, England, and was brought up in France from the age of two. His father worked as an engineer and his mother as a teacher. He is one of three children. Thompson has stated that his grandmother is "Indian English", and that he is a quarter Indian.From 1997 to 2005, He attended the Lycée International François-Ier in Fontainebleau, a French school with an Anglophone section, where he became a native French speaker. He is also proficient in Italian. After returning to England in 2006, Thompson spent a year with the Year Out Drama Company in Stratford-upon-Avon. He went on to study English and Drama at the University of Bristol, and later trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, graduating in 2013.
Career
Thompson's first professional theatre role was as Lysander in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Globe Theatre, for which he received nominations for both an Evening Standard Theatre Award and an Ian Charleson Award. He went on to 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 credits include James in Tiger Country at the Hampstead Theatre, Orestes in the Oresteia at the Almeida Theatre and Laertes in the 2017 production of Hamlet. In 2018, Thompson took over the role of Edgar from Jonathan Bailey in the Ian McKellen-led King Lear after Bailey declined to join the West End transfer in order to appear in the musical Company.From 2014 to 2016, Thompson played Simon in the BBC One drama In the Club. He narrated a new adaptation of Frederick Forsyth’s novella The Shepherd for BBC Radio 3, broadcast on Christmas Eve 2016. Thompson made his feature film debut with a small role as a warrant officer in Christopher Nolan's 2017 World War II film Dunkirk. He later portrayed Peter Hain in Misbehaviour, a film centred on the 1970 Miss World competition. In 2019, he was cast as Benedict, the second-eldest Bridgerton sibling, in the Shondaland-produced Netflix period drama Bridgerton, which premiered in 2020 and is based on the novels by Julia Quinn.
Thompson played Willem in the English-language stage adaptation of A Little Life, which opened at the Richmond Theatre in March 2023 before transferring to the Harold Pinter Theatre and subsequently the Savoy Theatre. His performance earned him a WhatsOnStage Award and a nomination for a Laurence Olivier Award. He also appeared as Hiram Bingham IV in the Netflix World War II miniseries Transatlantic.
In January 2024, it was announced that Thompson would star as Berowne in the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Love's Labour's Lost, directed by Emily Burns, which ran from 11 April to 18 May 2024. He reprised his role as Benedict in the fourth series of Bridgerton in 2026, which centred on his character. On 22 January 2025, it was announced that Thompson would join the Young Vic production of Tim Crouch's cold-read play "An Oak Tree", which ran from 6 to 17 May 2025.