Michelle Dockery

Michelle Dockery (birthname: Michelle Suzanne Dockery) is best known to audiences for her elegant recurring role as Lady Mary Crawley in the TV phenomenon, Downton Abbey, but she has also built a diverse movie acting career, beginning with a supporting role in the Joe Wright-directed thriller, Hanna (2011), starring Saoirse Ronan in the title role, Eric Baena, Cate Blanchett, Tom Hollander, Olivia Williams and Jason Flemyng, earning $65.3 million for distributors Focus Features/Universal Pictures/Sony Pictures Releasing International. 

Dockery was again cast by director Wright for a key supporting role in screenwriter Tom Stoppard’s screen version of Leo Tolstoy’s novel, Anna Karenina (2012), starring Keira Knightley, Jude Law, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Kelly Macdonald, Matthew Macfadyen, Domhnall Gleeson, Ruth Wilson, Alicia Vikander, Olivia Williams and Emily Watson, and grossing a disappointing $69 million (against $40.6 million costs) for distributors Focus Features/Universal Pictures.

Dockery landed her biggest screen role to date in the action thriller, Non-Stop (2014), starring Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore, and Lupita Nyong’o under Jaume Collet-Serra’s direction and with Joel Silver as lead producer, and making a big $223 million gross for Universal Pictures/StudioCanal. Dockery appeared with stars Ryan Reynolds and Ben Kingsley in the sci-fi thriller, Self/less (2015), with Natalie Martinez, Matthew Goode, Víctor Garber, and Derek Luke under Tarsem Singh’s direction, but losing money for lead producers FilmNation Entertainment/Endgame Entertainment/Ram Bergman Productions and Focus Features, which released.

Michelle Dockery co-starred with Jim Broadbent, Emily Mortimer, Harriet Walter, and Charlotte Rampling in The Sense of an Ending (2017), based on Julian Barnes’s Booker Prize-winning novel and directed by Ritesh Batra, grossing $4.5 million for CBS Films/Lionsgate/StudioCanal. Dockery reprised the role of Lady Mary Crawley in the Michael Engler-directed feature version of Downton Abbey (2019), and in the Simon Curtis-directed sequel, Downton Abbey: A New Era (2022)—both reuniting the original TV cast led by Hugh Bonneville, Jim Carter, Elizabeth McGovern, Maggie Smith, Imelda Staunton and Penelope Wilton, and grossing a cumulative $280 million-plus, and then Dockery co-starred under Curtis’s direction in the subsequent third untitled feature (2025), all of which were released by Focus Features.

Dockery was the only woman in the generally all-guy cast of director/co-writer/producer Guy Ritchie’s hit crime comedy for Miramax, The Gentlemen (2019), starring Matthew McConaughey, Charlie Hunnam, Henry Golding, Jeremy Strong, Eddie Marsan, Colin Farrell and Hugh Grant, earning a knockout $115 million gross (against $22 million costs) for STXfilms/Entertainment Film Distributors. Dockery joined another hyper-action movie with director/co-writer Moritz Mohr’s Germany/South Africa/US feature debut, Boy Kills World (2023), starring Bill Skarsgård, with Jessica Rothe, Brett Gelman, Sharlto Copley, and Famke Janssen, and which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival before a release by Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions.

Michelle Dockery was cast by director/co-writer/producer Robert Zemeckis in the drama based on Richard McGuire’s 2014 graphic novel, Here (2024), starring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, with Paul Bettany and Kelly Reilly, and bombing at the box office with a $13.4 million gross (against $50 million costs) for TriStar Pictures through Sony Pictures Releasing. Dockery then co-starred with Mark Wahlberg and Topher Grace in director/producer Mel Gibson’s airborne thriller, Flight Risk (2025), backed by lead producers Davis Entertainment and Icon Productions and released by Lionsgate.