Aimee Lou Wood Finally Finds a Role She Can Sink Her Very British Teeth Into

Like any true Brit, Aimee Lou Wood has never thought of herself as ambitious. The idea of going after something she wanted — say, for instance, an acting role — struck her as more of an American trait, contrary to the demure sensibilities of her staid island people, who generally prefer to wait for the phone to ring.

Then she watched The White Lotus.

Like much of the world, Wood encountered Mike White‘s button-pushing resort drama during the pop culture doldrums of 2021, toward the end of the pandemic, and found herself hypnotized by the delicious appeal of rich people who act out on vacation.

“The show was a complete hyperfixation of mine, and it was all I would talk about,” she admits. “And then, on season two, Will Sharpe turned up, and I know him and I thought, ‘Maybe I could be in this?’ “

At the time, Wood already was an accomplished actress — she knew Sharpe because he directed her in the 2021 Benedict Cumberbatch drama The Electrical Life of Louis Wain. The Manchester native graduated from London’s prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in 2017, and after her first professional gig in a touring production of the play People, Places and Things, she was cast in the Netflix dramedy series Sex Education. The show aired for four seasons — taking up the bulk of her 20s — and earned her a British Academy Television Award. But between shooting scenes with co-stars like Ncuti Gatwa and Gillian Anderson, Wood would slip off the set to stream episodes of White Lotus. When season two finished, she texted her agents, asking them to try to get her an audition.

“And then I was like, ‘Actually, I don’t want to do it,’ ” she says with a laugh. “It puts so much pressure on me. I really tried to trick myself out of [sending an audition] self-tape.”

Wood ended up reading for the part of Chelsea, one of what Wood calls season three’s “regular” people (she’s also from Manchester), a working-class girl trying to enjoy a Thailand vacation with her increasingly testy older boyfriend (Walton Goggins). Wood thinks of her as the “misfit” of the group, and says she instantly connected to the character when she discovered in the script that Chelsea was an astrology buff.

“I think a good word for her is unfazed,” she says. “Which is funny because I’m severely fazed. I have a Scorpio moon. But playing her felt like a little bit of a holiday, even when her radical optimism tips into the delulu — I think you need to be a bit delulu these days just to stay alive.”

Wood, now 30, found out that she got the job while out at a pub with some friends. “I started screaming, so it was very obvious that something had happened,” she recalls of the moment. “And then, of course, I told the waiter, so the bar put on the bloody theme song for everyone to dance to.”

When she arrived on set in Thailand, she was nervous to meet her co-stars — along with Goggins, season three includes turns by Patrick Schwarzenegger, Leslie Bibb, Parker Posey and Carrie Coon — and to figure out her own place in the dynamic of a mostly American cast.

Wood and Walton Goggins arrive at the Thailand-set resort of The White Lotus in season three.

Fabio Lovino/HBO

“These people live in Hollywood,” she says. “I live in my little flat in South East London, and I’m so British in my sensibility that I wasn’t sure how to handle being around so many people who are so front-footed and confident. All I ever do is take the piss out of myself. Even the way [White Lotus fans] are talking about me and my teeth — that I don’t have veneers or Botox — it feels a bit rebellious.”

Over the six-month shoot, some American culture rubbed off on Wood. She realized that it’s OK to be ambitious and to own the fact that she has goals, even opinions. “I would be more confident now to talk to a director about an idea I have, or just to make shit happen,” she says. “The first thing I did out of drama school was a play, and I remember thinking it was so cool that I was getting paid for it. Then I got Sex Education and thought it was just a fluke; even when it erupted, I figured my success would pass. It was basically just last week that I woke up and went, ‘What the hell is my life?’ ”

Smartly, Wood’s next move is to take a vacation of her own, although probably not at a five-star Thailand resort. “I haven’t stopped working since I left drama school, so I’m going to do the subversive thing and take a break at the biggest moment of my career,” she says. “I want to process this, and let it soak in.

“I spent a lot of my life worrying about being weird,” she goes on, “and now I’m realizing it could be my superpower.”

This story appeared in the Feb. 26 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.