Spanish-French-Irish actress Liah O’Prey was new to me when she played the Duchesse de Polignac in the recent Marie Antoinette TV series. So, of course, I had to look her up! I was surprised to find that I HAD seen her in something else (guess the performance wasn’t memorable?), and she’s done enough to make a post. So, let’s do it!
Inés adolescente in Painless (2012)
Two time periods intertwined, with one set during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) with children who can’t feel pain being institutionalized and tested.
Mary Livingston in Mary Queen of Scots (2018)
Liah played one of the many attendants of MQoS who were also named Mary in the recent (terrible) biopic.
Virginie in Madame Claude (2021)
A biopic of a famous French brothel keeper in the 1960s.
Estelle in Et la montagne fleurira (2022)
“With the French Second Republic crumbling around him, the son of a wealthy landowner in 19th-century Provence embarks on a perilous journey to reclaim his family’s legacy” per Google.
Anne in A Man of Action (2022)
A crime drama loosely based on a real-life Spanish/French anarchist, bricklayer, and bank robber from the 1940s-60s.
Young Julia in Domina (2021-23)
A TV bioseries set in ancient Rome, about famed Roman Empress Livia. Julia “the Elder” (39 BCE – 14 CE) was the daughter of Roman Emperor Augustus.
Joan of Arc in Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints (2024-25)
A TV series made for Fox, which confuses me, about the lives of various saints.
Yolande in Marie Antoinette (2022- )
She plays Marie-Antoinette’s favorite in the recent TV bioseries.
Which is your favorite of Liah O’Prey’s frock flick performances?
I can best sum up my feelings towards Ms O’Prey by saying that a key reason she keeps appearing in costume dramas is because anything more ‘Real World’ would automatically crash and burn because she’s so RIDICULOUSLY pretty.
I mean ‘Classic Hollywood’ pretty: had she come up in the Golden Age, I’m reasonably sure the Studio System would have been locked in a brief, vicious bidding war for the contract of a young woman whose face almost certainly belongs in a dictionary next to ‘Conventionally Beautiful’.
Hopefully she’ll get many, many opportunities to prove herself more than just a pretty face (One regards her casting as la Pucelle d’Orleans as a promising step: also, seeing the young lady short-haired in armour was not a religious experience, but it certainly felt Transcendent …).
I look forward to seeing if she ever gets cast as Ms Alexis Bleidl’s sister from another mister!