Cara Louise Theobold (born 8 January 1990)[1] is an English actress. She made her debut as Ivy Stuart in the ITV period drama Downton Abbey (2012–2013). She has since starred in the BBC series The Syndicate and Together (both 2015), the E4 comedy Crazyhead (2016), and the Amazon Prime thriller Absentia (2017–2020).
During the 2011 Christmas holidays of her final year at the Guildhall, Theobold auditioned for the Downton Abbey role of Ivy Stuart.[1] She was allowed to finish her final year of drama school early to begin filming the series at Easter.[1] Theobold characterised Ivy as "ambitious" and "a dreamer".[3] She returned for the fourth series of the show in 2013.[3] Her work on the series resulted in her being a co-recipient of the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series.
In 2014, Theobold made a guest appearance on the TV sitcom Lovesick (formerly known as Scrotal Recall).[4] In 2015, she appeared in two episodes of Last Tango in Halifax as Holly,[5] and in an episode of Call the Midwife.[6] She next starred as Sarah, a housekeeper for a stately home, one of the main characters in the third series of The Syndicate, which aired in spring 2015.[7] She is also the voice actress for Tracer in the video games Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm, and starred in the E4/Netflix original series Crazyhead alongside Susan Wokoma.[8][9] In 2016, it was announced that Theobold would star in Absentia along with Stana Katic and Patrick Heusinger. In 2019, she appeared in ITV2 series Zomboat! as “fiery, feisty and very much the centre of her own universe” Jo, one of the show's main characters.[10] In 2018, she played the part of Victoria Brown in the Polish film, 303 Squadron.
