In a sturdy, redbrick barn in rural Leicestershire, England, Bella Ramsey considers a 10-foot drop from the top of a hay bale. It’s an icy, mid-winter morning and the lead of the zombie mega-hit The Last of Us has requested we meet at a family-run farm near to where they grew up, where members of the public can enjoy tractor rides and feed the animals (of which there are plenty, including an ornery-looking goat that Ramsey claims to have visited since they were a child).
The mood is immediately frolicsome. “I’m going to drop down,” they holler at me with that slight flick of a lisp you’ll recognize off the telly. At this, they leap from the bale, wrapping their legs around a rope swing. I’m momentarily gripped by visions of HBO executives screaming in fear as the principal actor on their reportedly $100 million-a-season post-apocalyptic thriller breaks an ankle. Luckily, they stick the landing gracefully. “Fun!” they enthuse breathlessly, happily brushing some errant hay off their faded black Adidas sweatshirt.
Granted, a muddy farmyard in the Midlands is not the most celeb-y setting for a sit-down with Vogue, but it just so happens that this is one of Ramsey’s favorite places. It certainly fits their vibe. The Ramsey family is a tight unit: dinners at home, family viewings of The Chase—Bella recently entered a pub quiz with their parents and received a wooden spoon for coming in last.
We’d met earlier in the parking lot of the local train station—I spotted Ramsey waving wildly at me, dressed in a standard-issue black puffer and white Adidas trainers, looking to the untrained eye like every other British youth on a gray day. “Look for the tiny red car,” they’d instructed me on text. The car is indeed red and tiny, and when I squeezed in they cheerfully announced that they failed their driving test four times. “This,” they say drolly after accidentally drifting into the wrong lane, “is the roundabout I failed on.”
Although don’t be entirely fooled. For all their approachability—they just offered me a pair of wellies—Ramsey ranks high among the most successful actors of their generation. In 2023, almost 40 million people watched their first appearance in The Last of Us and it has since become HBO’s most-viewed show ever in Europe. In the public eye for just under half their life, their ascent from British child actor to Hollywood name came courtesy of another streaming juggernaut, Game of Thrones, in which they starred, age 11, as flinty-eyed noblewoman Lyanna Mormont. Yet apart from a querulous child in bottle glasses who asks if Ramsey is Mildred from CBBC’s The Worst Witch (they were and, yes, they’re happy to take a photo), the farm is still somewhere they can go largely unrecognized. The bored petting zoo attendant who hands over a white rabbit to Ramsey certainly doesn’t clock them from their front-row appearances at Dior. Ramsey likes it for this reason. “Hey, little guy,” they whisper as they stroke the quivering bunny.
